


Fire Safety

by Desiderii



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragons, Ensemble Cast, Extremis, Fix-It, Gen, Just Another Tuesday, Post-Avengers (2012), Superheroes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-03-29 03:17:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3880210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desiderii/pseuds/Desiderii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a frustrating battle with a brand-new wizard wielding Asgardian spells, Tony Stark has seized upon magic as his next field of study to crack. This goes about as well as to be expected, especially when Pepper is gifted a dragon's egg and the team finds out just who is behind offering magic to Midgardians.  </p><p>MCU-Verse, sort of a fix-it for IM3 and how it handwaved away Pepper's Extremis at the end, plus a hint of dragon. Tony-PoV, Pepper-PoV and Thor-PoV.</p><p>This fic is Finished, and only technically only a WIP in that not all the chapters are going up at the same time. Chapters will go live as soon as I finish the final-pass edit on them. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tygermama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tygermama/gifts).



> Special thanks to [percygranger](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Percygranger/pseuds/Percygranger) for being my tireless beta. Also thanks to [ureshiichigo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ureshiiichigo/pseuds/ureshiiichigo) for being my cheerleader whenever my ego decides to take a nosedive. Typos and other nonsense are my fault entirely. 
> 
> This story is MCU-based and set after _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ and _Agents of SHIELD_ Season 1 and before _Ultron_ and _Agents of SHIELD_ Season 2, wherein our intrepid Avengers have actually formed their team and managed to keep it in one piece long enough to be domestic. I finished this the day Ultron came out, so I figure now is as good a time to post as any. Hilariously, nothing I did got Jossed except the physical layout of the tower. I severely underestimated the vast quantity of fabricator bots that made a cameo. :)
> 
> Based off a prompt from [Tygermama](http://tygermama.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, so I guess, technically, this is a gift for her. :)

“It’s not natural,” Tony swore, looping the Iron Man suit up and around to put the sun behind him and make another pass at the wizard or whatever the fuck he was. “I’m a _futurist_. It’s on my business cards, for chrissakes, and all that research and I still can’t even figure out what this guy is doing even after he’s already done it.” 

“Shall I print you new cards, sir, omitting the now-inaccurate term?” JARVIS asked in an even tone that reflected none of the blaring warnings spattered across the suit’s heads-up display. Hurricane-force winds buffeted the suit and the sun was rapidly being covered by a nasty-looking electrical storm in several lovely shades of green. “You may be pleased to note, however, that each effect produced by the target appears to follow its own internal logic. Shall I begin analysis, sir?” 

Tony jerked to the side to dodge an energy bolt of eye-catching orange that smelled like hot orange Tang and sizzled as it flew. “If you can get me anything useful, it’d be a miracle. I’m doing zip zilch nada with all my nonlethals and I’d really prefer not to level any buildings.” Tony swooped and brought up his gauntlets to take a few potshots at a low enough power that he would hopefully only stun. Each were deflected by some sort of sparkly force field. 

The wizard raised his hands, gestured, and slammed the Hulk into the broadside of a parking garage.

Tony hissed in disgust as he shot forward. The wizard’s melodramatic cape fluttered in the breeze of Tony’s flyby. The guy took himself seriously, if nothing else. His whole ensemble screamed ‘magic’, down to the purple day-glo runes in fabric paint on the cape itself.

Down at street-level, the Hulk shook himself free of the worst of the concrete dust and roared loud enough to wake half the borough out of their summer siestas. He pounded the street, sending rubble in all directions, and shot a frustrated grimace up at Tony. 

Tony grimaced in sympathy behind the Iron Man faceplate. Delusions of grandeur or no, the wizard looked human, and he sure as hell packed a wallop. Unless they wanted to gamble and risk the Hulk pasting the guy into the asphalt or having Tony leave a sizzling hole in his chest, they were stuck with delaying tactics. Tony just hoped they didn’t have to delay so long that the wizard pissed off the Hulk enough to stop playing nice.

“Anything, Jarvis?” Tony asked, taking a quick left to dodge a crackle of green lighting that speared down from the sky and left a smoking crater in the road. He was certain of one thing, if nothing else: the wizard was a hell of a multitasker.

“While the bulk of the task remains,” JARVIS said, “analysis of the day’s activities thus far suggest a necessary period of uninterrupted concentration following the discharge of the orange projectile, sir.” 

“He has to reload?” Tony asked, incredulous.

“So it would seem.” 

“How long?”

“Eight seconds, approximately. If interrupted, however, he seems to-” JARVIS cut off. 

The Hulk brought his fist down onto the street hard and knocked the wizard off-balance as the asphalt cracked and split beneath his feet. This time, instead of an orange bolt coming from the wizard’s fingertips, a cascade of blue sparks skittered across the Hulk’s skin. Roaring in pain, the Hulk twisted away.

“-he seems to cast some sort of Harry-Potter nastiness,” Tony finished for him. “Brilliant. Any inkling whether he can take a hit and keep on ticking, or are we going to have to teach the Hulk finesse?” 

Thor’s rueful words filtered over the comms. “Finesse, I am afraid.” 

“Thor.” Tony pulled around hard to dodge the orange bolt the wizard finally found enough time to finish casting. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of denim and muscles. “What took you so long?”

Thor just laughed. His answer came unhurried and a little too casual for Tony’s taste. “Jane and I were enjoying our noon repast some ways north of here, partaking of the local fare just as - it seems - were you and the good doctor.”

“You haven’t lived until you’ve tried the panini.” Tony caromed off an apartment building and winced as a chunk of the cornice crunched and dropped away. A crack of green lightning followed and Tony jogged hard to the right, scraping against the brick of the next building over. He could thank JARVIS more than his reflexes for the miss.

“I shall take the panini under advisement,” Thor told him gravely.

Tony hung a sharp left to keep himself within sight of the wizard and finally got a good look at Thor. 

Thor, who’d arrive via Mjolnir-powered flight and was now standing in the middle of the street as the Hulk flung himself past to climb the parking garage.

Thor in a _t-shirt and jeans_ holding Mjolnir loosely in one hand and watching the wizard with narrowed eyes. 

That Thor.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Tony said. “I’d feel a lot better seeing you down there sporting a fancy cape of your own. This joker’s stealing your schtick, lightning and all.”

Thunder rumbled overhead. It was probably Tony’s imagination, but it sounded rather green.

“Perhaps,” Thor replied. A moment later, his contemplation of their target was rudely interrupted by a cascade of blue sparks sent in his direction.

Thor threw himself sideways into a roll that left him crouched and ready to leap. Char blackened his shoulders and his hair came free of its tie. He spun Mjolnir in his grip and watched the wizard with a look of focused concentration. 

“I appreciate the whole listening-to-Cap and looking-before-leaping thing you’ve finally figured out, really I do, but c’mon, Thor. Magical girl time.”

“Be at ease, Man of Iron.” Thor stood and waved the Hulk off. 

At the signal, the Hulk hung back by the parking garage, still shaking his head to clear it. Tony set himself down at street level just within the wizard’s periphery.

The orange light around the wizard’s fingers died. Green-tinged stormclouds still roiled overhead, but the wizard’s attention was good and centered upon Thor and his hammer.

Audience in mind, Thor raised Mjolnir to the heavens with a dramatic flourish. High above, the skies churned and seethed, throwing out frenetic cloud-to-cloud lightning with ever-increasing rapidity. The wizard snapped his gaze upward and, contrary to everything Tony had seen of him thus far, began to very visibly panic. Eyes wide, he stumbled back. He flailed through a ritual hand-jive of some sort that did not look particularly healthy for the rest of them, and Tony glanced to Thor. 

Thor shook his head, a tiny motion to which he added quiet, “Hold yet,” into his comm. 

Above, white light streaked through roiled green sky to illuminate the clouds from within, and the hairs on the back of Tony’s neck stood on end. The wizard’s hands began to leave trails of light in the air as he shifted them through one complex figure after another, swift and methodical. Whatever he was doing was starting to near completion, judging by the way the ground began to blacken and scorch at his feet. 

Thor again waved the Hulk off and said, “This pup needs only to be shaken at the proper moment-”

Mjolnir still held high, Thor directed his gaze back up to the sky. His hair whipped in the stiff wind of the storm. He shouted something incomprehensible. The sky answered, and Thor raised his free hand, palm up, to welcome the result. 

Lightning struck Mjolnir and, by extension, Thor.

Tony’s faceplate dimmed automatically, but he flinched back regardless, jerking his forearm up in front of his face as crisp, blue-white light overwhelmed his display. By the time Tony could see properly again, Thor had already begun to stride forward toward the now-prone wizard. 

Signature red cape fluttering, Thor came to a halt with a rattle of chainmail. The wings on his helm and the great disks that protected his chest should, by all rights, look ridiculous. However, in the midst of a battlefield with the street faintly smoking, the Hulk standing beneath a spiderweb crater in the solid concrete wall above, and the sky still a dark and threatening green, Tony figured he looked right at home.

“Wizard!” Thor’s voice seem to roll from somewhere deep in his chest, filling the street and echoing from the surrounding buildings. “Desist!” 

The wizard in question was flat on his back, hands over his face, and even from where Tony stood, he could hear the guy’s groan. The area gradually lightened, the clouds overhead dissipating now that they weren’t being held in place.

Thor grasped the wizard by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet. The wizard yelped. 

Tony took that as his signal to go play bodyguard. He stopped a step behind Thor to get a good look at the practitioner who’d nearly zapped him more than once. 

The kid couldn’t have more than eighteen, if that. His magic cape had been home-made, the edges ragged and the runes on the back drawn with a wobbly hand. With a hollow look in his eyes and an ‘I-fucked-up’ expression on his bloodless brown face, he hardly looked like he could have given the Hulk a run for his money. 

Tony sighed. 

In Thor’s hold, the kid twitched and struggled. He muttered something, or tried to, only to cut himself off with a gasp of pain. Thor shook him gently, and the kid flailed, slapping weakly at the solid wall of muscle that had effectively scruffed him. 

Thor tilted his head away from the worst of the flailing and warned, “Do not attempt to cast again. You will only cause yourself more hurt.” 

“Hey, kid.” Tony held out a calming hand. If his gauntlet was charged and ready to stun, well, there were a handful of Hulk-sized dents in the side of the parking structure that made it a sensible precaution. He didn’t think he’d need to, though, not with how out of his depth the poor kid looked. “Seriously though. The guy has a magic hammer. He is literally Thor, God of Thunder. You should probably listen to him on something like this.” 

The kid stopped flailing, eyes wide, and stared up Thor’s arm at his face. He then spoke the first word they’d heard from him outside of an incantation. “Shit.” He sounded even younger than he looked. 

“Yeah, shit.” Tony agreed. The cheerful beep of comms coming within range and online heralded the arrival of the quinjet and the rest of the team. “And I think Captain America wants a word with you.” 

“Aw, dammit.” All the fight went out of the kid, and he slumped in Thor’s hold. 

The sky returned to normal, the last of the green leaking from the clouds. To Tony’s experienced eye, the damage to street and structures was easily worth half a million. Even with the suitcase suit’s straining filters and the afternoon breeze, Tony could still taste ozone and oranges in the air. 

“Yeah,” Tony said, “You can say that again.”

The analysis on the kid’s magic that JARVIS had been running in the background finally displayed on Tony’s HUD.


	2. Chapter 2

Without the cape and the mystic macarena he’d had going on, Oscar Thompson was a skinny little Queen’s kid with fading burn scars marching up and down his arms. Tony hung back on the asphalt as Natasha tried to coax the kid onto the quinjet with promises that the Avengers would work something out with the authorities. 

The flashing lights of police cars idling just beyond the worst of the scorch marks made that particular tactic perhaps more successful than the others they’d tried so far. (Which had been Clint’s offers of candy and promises to not call his mom. While the suggestions had made the kid crack a smile, Clint had definitely been thrown off of the quinjet for not helping.) Still, the kid was wary. And - like anyone with an internet connection - wary of Natasha especially. 

“Smart kid,” Tony commented to the large and jingly armor-wearing someone who came to a halt at his shoulder. “Pity he decided to take up magic.” 

Thor chuckled. “As opposed to your preferred dabbles in mad science?”

“Robotics. Mechanical and Electrical Engineering.” Tony lifted an arm with a whir of servos and patted Thor on the chest with the back of his gauntlet. “All very reasonable, very sane science, thank you very much.”

“As you say,” Thor agreed amiably. 

The pair of them surveyed the beginnings of the cleanup. Beyond a few stray fireballs, most of the damage had been contained to the side of the parking garage. The analysis of all of the spells the kid had been casting during their fight still glowed on Tony’s HUD. 

“I’m starting to feel significantly less okay with magic than I was before, and might I remind you I have not had the best experiences with the stuff,” Tony said, sending the data off to his lab servers. His ‘analysis of magic’ data set was becoming alarming large. “Seriously, though, what the hell was that?” 

“Asgardian.” Thor didn’t look happy. “That last spell would have created an immense shockwave. Upon interruption, however, it produces a prodigious backlash.” He glanced at Tony. “And a headache of equal proportion, even in the adept.” 

“How much do you know about Asgardian magic?” Tony asked, eyes narrowed. 

Over by the ramp of the quinjet, Natasha finally convinced Oscar that nobody wanted to eat him, and as the kid settled in, Steve started to round up the rest of them. 

“I am familiar with some magics,” Thor said. “Though Mjolnir is my weapon of choice, a warrior must spar with those wielding their own chosen weapons.” 

Tony slid a glance at Thor, but the Asgardian seemed content to leave the explanation there. He prompted, “You recognize these spells?”

“I have not seen the like since I was a child. As difficult as it may be to believe, this was the craft of one as yet ill-versed in magic.” 

“Are we talking babies with hand grenades style or is this more like a yellow-belt with a grudge?” 

“I know not of which you reference, but do either of those imply informal instruction, little practical experience, and perhaps a great need to prove themselves?”

Tony angled his suit towards Thor and tilted his head. “That sounds suspiciously specific.”

“Perhaps.”

Whereas Tony was simply ignoring Steve’s increasingly irritated beckons, Thor didn’t seem to see them at all. He stared through the quinjet and its occupants for a long, silent beat.

Then Thor exhaled hard and turned a far more cheerful grin Tony’s way. “I shall mention this to the Captain during debrief. And lest I forget, Jane spoke at lunch of her chats with Mistress Potts and how they thought a ‘double date’ might be amusing. I was to broach the subject next we met. Which, conveniently, seems to be now.” 

Tony, thrown by the subject shift, asked only, “Did she?” 

“Do you not agree?” 

“Oh, no, yeah. We can. I’ll let Pepper know you told me and she can give Jane a ring.” 

Steve stopped in front of them with a ‘is-this-really-the-time’ look in his eye and asked, “Shall we go?”

“Yeah, Cap, just planning my date with tall, blond, and hunky here,” Tony teased him. 

Steve chose to ignore Tony, which, granted, was probably for the best. “Unless you plan to fly home on your own, both of you, we’re liftoff in two minutes.” 

“Aye, aye!” Tony even added a lazy salute, which earned him a flat look and a headshake. 

Thor simply said, “We’re right behind you, Captain.”

Steve nodded once and headed for a cluster of police officers ostensibly playing crowd control. They all stood up a little straighter to see Captain America heading their way. 

There was little point in lingering. Tony started for the quinjet just as a half-clothed Bruce appeared from around the side with a shock blanket draped over his shoulders. Bruce gave a little wave with his granola bar. 

Tony saluted back, glad to see him no worse for his experience with wizard kid. Inside the quinjet, the tops of Natasha and Oscar Thompson’s heads were just visible over the seatbacks. This was going to be one uncomfortable ride home.

“Can just anyone pick up magic?” Tony asked Thor as the god fell into step beside him. 

“Anyone?” Thor gave it a moment’s thought. “Perhaps not. There is a certain amount of aptitude required.” 

“Aptitude. Are we talking natural talent here?” 

“Magic must suit the user if they are to become a successful practitioner.” 

“I know all about suits,” Tony said. “Let’s call that one checkbox marked.”

Thor shook his head and slowed just as they reached the gangplank. “It is good you had landed before the youth’s final spell took hold.” A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “If that particular spell is allowed to be completed, my experience says it is not the caster who reawakens with a monstrous headache.”


	3. Chapter 3

“-and so she hands me a folder, cool as you please, and says ‘I think you’ll find our numbers satisfactory and our safety record spotless, Ms. Potts, and we look forward to working with you.’” 

“She was seriously lying to your face about the whole thing? And those machines…” Jane wore a baffled expression, her chin on her fist as she leaned on the tabletop. She took a sip of her wine and squinted at Pepper. “Did she really think she’d get away with it?” 

Pepper laughed and relaxed into Tony’s shoulder. “I’m pretty sure she did. I told her to come back with a prospectus containing significantly less fiction and then we’d talk. She looked like I’d hit her over the head with a hammer.” 

“Being acquired is lucrative,” Tony added over the rim of his scotch glass. “I wouldn’t be surprised if their whole business plan was tailored around making themselves look attractive to the renowned Ms. Potts.” He levered himself up a few inches with the arm he’d thrown across the back of the booth. “But who am I to throw stones? That’s been my plan for years.” 

“Tony,” Pepper said with a quelling look and nudged him gently in the ribs with her elbow.

Tony gave her a look of horror and melodramatically splayed his hand over his arc reactor scar. 

“There’s something about outrageous flirting,” Jane suddenly said, apropos of nothing. She tipped her wineglass to indicate the six-foot-something wall of beefcake sitting next to her. “Grand gestures.”

At her side, Thor gave his eyebrows a cocky waggle and finished off his beer. He then set the glass down with a heavy clink and pushed it into the cluster with the others the waitress had yet to take away. 

“It’s something all right,” Pepper agreed, hiding a smile. “Just what, however, I’m not sure I can tell you.” 

Tony settled back against the booth cushion and gave Jane and Thor a smug grin. 

“Oh-,” Jane added, almost as an afterthought. “-and small gestures, too. Never underestimate those.” 

Slapping her hand over her mouth, Pepper laughed until she snorted and shared a _look_ with Jane, a look that said Tony was missing another inside joke from a club he wasn’t invited to join. 

An actual, literal club, too. Pepper had once shown Tony her official ‘Juggling Club’ card that Jane’s friend Darcy had made for them. In explaining the club to him, she’d had thrown around words like ‘plates in the air’ and ‘balancing life and superheroics’, along with probably more glitter than was healthy when she’d dragged the card out of her purse and shaken it off. He didn’t know why the card had a picture of a dragon, and he only partially understood why it was wearing a flower crown. However, the dragon was juggling flaming chainsaws and even he could spot that kind of obvious metaphor.

Tony’s thoughts were getting away from him. He peered into his scotch for a long moment before he set it gently down. Jane and Pepper’s continued conversation washed over him, and Thor’s comments added a tenor rumble to the background of Tony’s pleasant buzz.

The table was crowded with the half-empty plates of finger food and tumblers of water. Tony had picked the most expensive sports bar he could find as a compromise between Pepper’s dress and Jane and Thor’s jeans, but it was still a sports bar, and no amount of polished mahogany and gold inlay could distract from the flat-screens high on the walls. The evening had grown late, their check had been paid, and their original waitress’s shift had long since ended. As the crowd that had packed the bar earlier dwindled, left behind were only a handful of drunken men in waistcoats and bowties, their jackets thrown over their chairs, who cheered at the recaps of the day’s least boring scores. By now, the kitchen had probably closed as well.

“You know what Tony’s not heard, yet,” Pepper said, shifting her weight so she could see Tony’s face. “Did anyone tell you Jane went to Asgard?”

His attention snapped back to the group at the sound of his name, and Tony opened his mouth to reply in the affirmative. He paused, let out his breath, and squinted. “I, no, maybe? If someone did, it wasn’t you,” he told Jane. “All I remember was scuttlebutt about London and extra-dimensional portals and a giant thing and some explosions. What I know about Asgard is from Thor’s perspective.” Interest piqued, he pulled his arm from behind Pepper and leaned forward. “You speak Astrophysicist. Tell me everything. How was it?” 

“Amazing,” Jane said immediately, sitting up lean over the table as well. “You just wouldn’t even believe it.” 

Tony grinned at her obvious enthusiasm. “Try me.”

Jane lit up, her excitement bubbling up between her words. “It was brilliant. Gorgeous. The spires of the city reach right up into the sky, and I’m not sure how they even have atmosphere, let alone the kind of technology that allows such monumental construction and, I swear, half of it had to be glass or some sort of polymer, or, I don’t even know, transparent aluminum. Everything is just massive.” She gestured with and enthusiastic jerk and nearly knocked her wineglass over. Thor’s hand folded over hers, both of them catching the glass before it tipped, and she threw a broad smile at him. “You would have a field day there, Tony. I couldn’t go half a dozen steps without encountering something that would bring us forward ten, twenty years in research in a hundred different fields. That old ‘every big breakthrough is ten years off’ joke would have to apply to a whole new set of impossibilities. _Think_ about it.”

“I am.” Tony slid a glance at Thor. “I thought Asgard was built on witchcraft and hocus pocus.” 

Jane dismissed that idea with a wave. “I jumped back and forth through a quantum anomaly that I could pick up and map on my equipment, but they describe the phenomena as ‘a thinning of the barrier between realms’. Our big bang is their ‘birth of light’. I can’t tell where their magic lets off and their tech begins. They have advanced magnetic levitation, independent of stationary forces on both a large and a small scale, sure, but,” Jane glanced at Thor before barreling on, “as far as I could tell, Thor’s mum used sheer willpower to create holographic simulacra with precision auditory reduplication.

“And since I was dying at the time-” Jane continued, impassioned, “-I even got a good up-close-and-personal look at their medical equipment. They’re using a quantum field generator for diagnostics and systemic biological stabilization. Healing on a molecular level.” 

Tony finally held up a hand. “Wait- just… holdup.” At his side, Pepper held her fingers across her mouth and leaned on the table, and he could just tell she was laughing at him for being skeptical. Still, “A quantum field generator?” 

Lips pressed together and eyes bright with amusement, Jane nodded.

“The Asgardian term is ‘soulforge’,” Thor said, deadpan, as Tony flicked his gaze back and forth between the two of them in uncertainty.

“See what I mean?” Jane asked. “A _soulforge_.”

“You’re bullshitting me,” Tony said. “And that’s not nice, I paid for dinner.” 

“The Avengers accounts paid for dinner,” Pepper corrected. “And, technically, right now Thor’s sponsorship revenue is footing the bill for tonight.” 

Jane shook her head. “No bullshit. Magic. Tech. Indistinguishable beyond a certain level of advancement. You of all people know the quote by heart.” 

“And Stark R&D has been gaining traction on alien tech dev after we snapped up that chunk of former SHIELD,” Pepper added, her smile deliciously self-satisfied. “I might have convinced Maria to show me some of the very classified advancements they’d been preparing to make. It’s pretty magical.” 

“Yeah, but that’s alien tech,” Tony argued. “Advanced, sure, and half of it we have no idea what it even does besides explode, but I’ve taken that stuff apart, what little I’ve managed to pry out of Maria thanks to Pepper. It’s very much technology. You’re talking about ‘souls’ and casting ‘major image’ right out of a Dungeons and Dragons handbook—all the very definition of _magic_ —and I’ve already tried-” 

“Tony,” Jane interrupted, pointing at Thor’s face. “This guy’s as alien as you’re ever going to meet.” 

Thor gave Tony a broad smile and tucked Jane against his side.

Hand held up in defeat, Tony gave in. “Significantly advanced technology. You took the words right out of my mouth. Say no more.”

“Your hate-on for magic is adorable,” Pepper patted Tony’s cheek, her smile soft and amused. “And it’s not that I don’t love hearing you talk shop with Jane…” 

“But-” he prompted.

“But I think they want to kick us out.”

A tentative throat-clear captured his attention, and the four of them turned as one to stare at the server standing politely at few feet from the end of their table. He hunched his shoulders at their regard. 

“We’re about ready to lock up, Ms. Potts?” the server ventured. He dipped his head in an abbreviated bow. “Do you and your companions require anything else?”

At the kitchen door near the back, Tony thought he could see the curves of several heads crowding the window. Beyond the employees wiping down tables and flipping chairs, however, he and the others were the last patrons there. 

“Not at all. We were just leaving,” Pepper told the server as she gave Tony a firm shove toward the end of the booth bench. 

The four gathered themselves and headed for the parking lot. Tony only wobbled a little on his feet as they made their way out to the sidewalk. 

Happy waved from the front of the only car left still idling at the curb.

Piling into the car, Jane leaned in to tell Tony, “Next time I’m in New York, we’re sitting down and trading notes. You and Banner have been working on stuff, Pepper finally got something out of Maria, and I’m sitting on all of Selvig’s research plus my own. We need an interdisciplinary lunch at the very least.” 

“Let’s get it catered.” Tony sprawled across Pepper before she could settle, and she shoved him up off of her just long enough to dig a bottle of water out of the ice in the door. “Catered?” he asked her. He repeated the question at Jane and Thor and was only satisfied when they’d all nodded. “Good. Done and done. Next time you’re in New York. It’s a plan.” He raised his voice and rapped on the partition between front and back. “Happy, the tower, please and thank you.”

Happy’s response was the rev of the engine as they pulled away from the restaurant.

On the way home, the car remained quiet as their night of conviviality caught up with them. Thor and Jane murmured increasingly flirtatious comments to one another beneath their breath while Tony dozed against Pepper’s side. She carded her fingers through his hair, humming a low, contented melody that vibrated through her chest.

Tony’s thoughts lingered on how Thor had cheerfully called a quantum field generator a soulforge, and that somehow a clever kid from Queens had used a book to learn how to throw fireballs.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony spun in his chair and made faces at the ceiling. The tiny holographic ball he tossed into the air juddered on its way down, but Tony barely noticed. “Jarvis,” he shouted over the thump of a heavy baseline. “Run the language again.”

“Parameters?” JARVIS had to turn the music down for Tony to be able to hear his reply. “Blanket analysis algorithms two through fourteen have turned up no further anomalous discoveries, sir.” 

The lab was lit by the harsh overhead light of office-supply halogens, bright enough to wash out the red and blue schematics of Tony’s latest suit upgrade hanging in the air and the room smelled of stale coffee and even staler pizza. Without outside windows, Tony’s only indication that day and night were out there happening to other people was the large digital clock that hung over the door displaying ‘7:16:07 AM’ in large, friendly digits. The seconds ticked up with a blue flicker for each number change.

Tony didn’t reply for long enough that JARVIS repeated, “Sir?” 

“Hrm?” Tony dropped his feet back to the floor and slowed his spin. He waved a hand to stop the music and his ears rang in the sudden quiet. “Right. Um- try some of the poetics analysis, and throw in harmonics and basic phonetics.” 

“Poetics analysis was run approximately eighteen hours and fifty-two minutes ago. Harmonics, ten hours and four minutes. Phonetics, nine hours almost to the second. Alternative analysis has included: Rhythmics, vocal over- and under-tones, recruitment of an internet forum full of enthusiastic neopagans--which I once more advise against, Sir--and careful digital reproduction of the recordings of young Mr. Thompson’s fight with sir and Dr. Banner.” 

With an annoyed grunt, Tony said, “Cancel analysis. Off overheads.” 

The halogens winked out, leaving the lab lit only by floating schematics and two dozen naked candles melting into puddles of wax on the floor. Sigils and figures scrawled in white chalk covered every bare inch of open concrete. The precise lines glowed brighter than they should in the flickering light. Or at least some of them did. Half of the chalk circles were smudged together by robot tread, and DUM-E sat in the corner with his fire extinguisher surrounded by a messy arc of suppressant powder. The bot looked sulky even in candlelight.

A pair of squat candles set on his desk illuminated the large, messy pile of paper. The top leaf was covered in runes and scribbles, the paper yellowed by his printer’s attempt to reproduce the look of parchment. He’d had to replace the color cartridges twice, and had sent off two new designs for printers that sucked less to the R&D department.

According to his stack, he’d had every word correct and every item and gesture in place. Still, the very simplest spell in Oscar Thompson’s spellbook--to light a candle--refused to work for him. 

“Is it quantum? Are my observations causing the effect to collapse in on itself?” Tony asked, only half rhetorically. “Or am I just not thinking wishfully enough?” 

“Those members of the ‘Brews of the Wyrd’ forum who have uploaded their results of the candle spell suggest that observation does not seem to be crucial difference.” 

Tony thumped his head against the book’s open pages. “How many Wyrdos percentage-wise?”

“Currently, 29.37% of your ‘Wyrdos’ who have downloaded the spell file have uploaded a successful attempt. It will be 30.16% if the forum user designated ‘BrigidsDottir’ uploads a video or test log after the fire department leaves her apartment.”

“How old’s she?” 

“Nineteen.” 

Tony, still facedown on the book, took a deep breath of musty, aged sheepskin. “And Oscar’s seventeen.” 

“While the average age of the ‘Wyrdos’ is relatively low, the documented longevity of Asgardians suggests that age, if a factor at all, is not a limiting one.” 

With a growl of frustration, Tony pushed away from the workbench and rolled his chair to the center of the room. “This time I’ve tried everything. Everything, Jarvis, and I’m still missing pieces. After today, I can’t even bring up some bullshit piece of tech and dump it on Pepper’s desk as my excuse for locking myself in here. I’ve got chalk circles. The place smells more of sage and Dragon’s blood than motor oil, which is a goddamned first. Bring up the scepter.”

In-depth schematics for Loki’s scepter scrolled through the air in blue and a full-sized 3D image popped into being at his side. Everything he’d managed to steal from SHIELD the first time he’d been invited to take a look at the thing was there, along with everything he’d scraped from their databases since, as well as his own recordings of the attempted mind control at the top of the tower. He had data on electromagnetic fluctuations within the Tower during New York, heat maps of Loki in the Hulk-tank, and now dozens of cellphone and webcam recordings of young people lighting candles. If there was any justice in this world, he would have everything he needed to detect disturbances in the Force. 

Justice seemed to be dead. As far as Tony could tell, magic just _happened_.

“We have fucking WWII era guns that use the Tesseract’s mojo, and Loki’s scepter--which Natasha proved uses the same power source--enchants people. I am smarter than Hydra scientists from nineteen-forty-fucking-two, Jarvis. I can crack this. I know I can.” 

“An inspiring pep talk, sir,” JARVIS said. “May I hazard that a night’s sleep might provide the appropriate alternative perspective for your ongoing investigation?” 

Waving away the scepter’s wireframe, Tony blew out a frustrated breath and turned a forced grin up at the ceiling. “Sleep doesn’t sound like me.”

“I have set an alarm for when you reach seventy-two hours without sleep, sir.” 

“And it hasn’t gone off,” Tony mused. “That’s probably why I could kill for some coffee. Anyone up yet?”

“Captain Rogers, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Thompson are eating breakfast.” 

Tony mulled over that particular information, weighing his options. He had a coffee machine down here, but the heating element had been scavenged since the last time he’d optimized the thing and he hadn’t been able to return it to its former glory. It made a drinkable, if nasty, cup. The coffee maker in the kitchen, however, remained untampered with after his initial balancing of bean and filtration--Natasha had been very clear on what would happen to him if he messed with it--so that was a tick in the ‘pro’ column. The judgey-face Cap always got when he spotted the bags under Tony’s eyes was firmly in the ‘con’ column, as was Sam’s matching morning-person cheer. 

“Thompson… like Oscar Thompson?” Tony snapped his fingers in thought. “I thought we sent the kid home with a stern lecture and a ‘congrats your son is superpowered’ informational packet?”

“It seems that both the Captain and Mr. Wilson thought it best to provide Mr. Thompson with a mentor framework. I believe today’s schedule includes volunteer work at the humane society.”

“Huh.” Tony took entirely too long to process that particular tidbit. He needed coffee, preferably soon. “His parents sign the permission slip?”

“The Captain is making pancakes.”

“Good enough. Start the coffeemaker.” Tony slapped his knees and stood. 

In the corner where he’d been relegated, DUM-E lifted his arm and managed to clonk the nearest table with the fire extinguisher attachment. He made as if to roll forward. 

Tony leveled a finger at him and the bot halted in his tracks.

“Don’t-” Tony warned. “If I come back and you’ve knocked over any more candles so you can put out the fires, I’m scrapping you with the rest of tonight’s failures.”

The bot’s arm drooped.

“Yeah, well, unlike _some_ , I’m not a pyromaniac.”

The extinguisher hissed and a puff of chemical escaped.

“No,” Tony repeated more firmly. “Absolutely not.” 

Tony held his finger out, pointing, until he was relatively certain the bot wasn’t going to make any more moves toward covering the rest of the lab in a layer of white powder. If he weren’t so tired, he’d probably be worried about how increasingly specific he was having to get on what sorts of fires should and should not be put out. 

“Keep an eye on him, Jarvis.”

“Of course, sir,” JARVIS said. “Shall I also warn the kitchen of your imminent arrival?”

“Knock yourself out.”


	5. Chapter 5

The kid stared at him wide-eyed over a fork full of pancakes hovering halfway to his mouth, and Tony began to doubt that JARVIS had warned anyone about anything. Even Cap looked mildly surprised, though that was probably because - when Tony looked down to see if his fly was open - he was covered in splotches of white powder rather than his usual grease smudges. Dusting futilely at his clothes, Tony succeeded only in filling the kitchen with chalk dust. He gave it up as a bad job when Steve only sighed at him and waved him toward the coffee maker.

“I take it you didn’t sleep last night,” Sam said from his spot at the table, eyebrows raised.

Tony beelined toward the coffee machine already burbling on the counter--thank you, JARVIS--and didn’t bother to respond to such an obviously rhetorical statement. Well, no response beyond a vague wave and non-committal ‘eaugh’ noise.

Apparently--luckily--the dysfunctionality of Tony’s sleeping habits wasn’t a battle Steve wanted to pick today. He turned back toward the skillet full of ready-to-flip pancakes with a roll of his eyes and said, “Stick around long enough and you can have a plate.”

“We haven’t seen you in days,” Sam added. He glanced at the kid still frozen mid-pancake and took pity. “He’s not going to bite you, Oscar.” 

“No offense,” Oscar said, setting down his fork. “But last time I saw him, he was flying around trying to shoot me.” 

Tony snorted. “And you were trying to zap me out of the sky. Under the circumstances, I think-” While he spoke, Tony rescued his Iron Man mug from the dishwasher. One hiss at the too-hot coffee carafe handle later (a blatantly unacceptable state of affairs), he leaned back against the counter and finished, “-I think we can call the whole first impression a wash.” 

The kid eyed Tony. “A wash?”

Tony stuck out a hand and put on his most winning smile. “Tony Stark, glad to meet you.” 

“Oscar Thompson.” The kid tentatively shook Tony’s hand. “Likewise.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Steve shake his head, catch sight of the powdery white butt-print Tony had left on the counter, and open his mouth. 

Tony headed Steve off at the pass, “Don’t let me interrupt. Daylight’s wasting.” He glanced at the window to make sure the sun was actually up. Thankfully, Steve closed his mouth and settled for giving Tony that exasperate face he was so good at. Tony flashed him a grin and continued, “Which means I’m interested in what be-winged heroes, teenage wizards and supersoldiers talk about over breakfast.”

Oscar retrieved his hand from Tony’s, frowned at his palm and tried to surreptitiously dust chalk off on his pant leg. “Er-” He glanced at Sam for his cue, and at the man’s nod, said, “I was just telling Sam about the flight spell I haven’t quite gotten to work right.” 

“Huh,” Tony said. He turned to Steve. “Who needs a suit when you have a flight spell.”

“I was about to offer to teach him how humans fly if he ever gets it working,” Sam said, directing his words toward Oscar. The kid lit up like Christmas come early.

Steve, however, frowned at Tony. “Should I be worried? How long have you been up?” He paused and added in an entirely different tone, “That is a lot of chalk.” 

“I’m a ways from getting the spell to work,” Oscar told Sam. “But I’m close enough to make it fun. I was going by the store tonight to buy-” He cut himself off and took another look at Tony. Slowly, he said, “Chalk, actually. Most of the spells from my book take chalk.”

At his words, all three of them focused on Tony. Tony saluted them with his mug and tried to look innocent. 

“Tony-” Steve asked, speaking carefully. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about Oscar’s book, would you?” 

“You gave it back to him, didn’t you? With strict instructions to call the Avengers if he gets any more ideas about ‘claiming Queens as his protectorate’, I believe someone said?” 

Steve gave him a hard look. “We’re not talking about Oscar, we’re talking about you. What were you up to all night?” 

“I’m not one for regular sleep patterns. We’ve already had this fight,” Tony said. “At least twice. Jarvis can start playback and we can save everyone some time.” 

“Oscar’s been telling us for the past week that magic requires a rested mind and focus.” 

“I’ve got focus in spades.” 

“You’ve got obsession in spades. You have no idea what you’re working with.”

“That’s obviously what I’m trying to find out. This research is just as important as the suit if we’re going to have half-baked wizards like this kid out there spell-slinging their way through the middle of the city.” Tony paused to wave his mug toward Oscar. “No offense, Oscar.” 

Oscar looked to Sam, his forehead furrowed and eyes wide. He gestured at Tony and Steve with his fork. “Should I be offended?” 

“Maybe?” Sam tilted his head. “You can if you want, but I don’t think it’s personal.” 

“At least it was Oscar and not Loki,” Steve said, forcibly keeping his volume restrained. “Not some other Asgardian, or someone else we’ve never even heard of with spells Thor’s never seen before. We could have found someone who intended to harm people, not someone in over their heads trying to do what they think is right. You can’t blame him for that.” 

“Are we still talking about Oscar?” Tony raised his eyebrows. “Are we? Because that kind of statement smacks of personal experience to me. Something you tell yourself when someone gets hurt?” 

Sam winced and half stood out of his chair, waving his hands to catch Steve’s attention. 

Steve drew himself up and ignored him. More calmly than was probably warranted, he told Tony. “That was uncalled for.” 

At the look on Steve’s face, Tony backtracked. “Yeah. Yes. Look. But I’m in charge of planning for threats, and some of those threats are magic, so that means I need to know what is going on behind the scenes. If I don’t, the Hulk gets thrown around, things get damaged, and sometimes people die. If Thor hadn’t had an insider’s opinion on this stuff, our little prize-fight with Oscar here might have ended in a different kind of pancake. Him or someone else. I need to get out ahead of this, and I can’t do that if I can’t figure out how this kid throws fireballs.” His coffee mug nearly slipped from his fingers as he gestured at Oscar again, and some of its contents sloshed onto the floor. 

“Tony,” was all Steve said. At Steve’s firm tone, Tony heeled around, ready to start up another defensive ramble, but pulled up short at the small shake of Steve’s head. Steve then nodded towards Oscar.

The kid was sitting behind his plate of pancakes looking heart-bruised and guilty, collateral damage of Tony’s arguments. Steve could take it, gave as good as he got, but the kid was just a kid. 

Cursing himself, Tony said, “Hey, kid. Believe me when I tell you that pulling each other’s bacon out of the fire is what the Avengers are all about. Whatever might have been wasn’t, okay? Nobody got pancaked, so let’s think bacon instead. You’re half an Avenger already and it’s kind of our motto. E pluribus bacon.” 

“Bacon, huh?” Oscar didn’t look quite convinced, but Tony’s rapid patter almost made him crack a smile. 

“In Cap we trust.” Tony applied his best harmless grin and Oscar seemed to relax a little. “And, speaking of both Cap and bacon, he should be making you some to go with those pancakes. Jarvis, we have any-”

Sam saved all of them from Tony’s tangent by interjecting, “What spell?” 

Tony blinked at Sam for the few second sit took for his brain to catch up. Even then, he could only repeat, “What spell?”

“What spell had you up all night?” Sam elaborated. 

Squashing down the little flare of defensiveness, Tony summoned up his dignity and said, “I was trying to light a candle.” 

Steve handed him a plate of pancakes and somehow Tony found himself at the table with a fork and the bottle of syrup. He wasn’t quite sure how that had happened, but at this point he wasn’t going to complain. 

Oscar was speaking. Tony blinked at him and the thread of determination in his voice. “The first spell’s always the most tricky. You got to concentrate, sure, but you also have to trust your instinct, and if you haven’t done a spell you don’t have an instinct. You can’t manhandle magic or it will blow up in your face.” 

The kid spoke with all the hard-won wisdom of someone who’d singed his eyebrows off more than once. Tony was well versed in that particular experience. Still, he stopped Oscar from continuing with a wave. “I don’t need to be able to do it. I just want to know how it works. I need data.” He swallowed a forkful of his breakfast and gave Oscar a narrow-eyed, speculative look. “If you wanted to come down to the la-” 

“Not today,” Steve cut in firmly as he seated himself with his own plate. “The humane society is expecting us, and I’m not sure it’s entirely ethical to treat Oscar as some sort of lab rat. He’s a minor.” 

“You could have his parents sign a consent release. The interns do it all the time. I can have Pepper draw up the paperwork.” 

“Tony-” Steve warned. 

“All right.” Tony held up his hands in defeat. “But listen, Oscar, if you happen to video yourself performing some of that casting mumbo-jumbo, you send it straight to me. Let me give you my email. Jarvis, send Oscar my personal email.” 

Oscar looked to Sam for help. 

Sam thought for a moment. “Actually, it might help to tell him where you got the book.”

“I went back looking, but that was the only one,” Oscar said. “And I told everyone that the first day I was here.” 

“I didn’t see anything about the origins of the book in the report.” Tony’s interest rose along with his blood sugar as he packed away his pancakes. “The book’s point of origin was one of the first things I looked for. It was listed as ‘provenance unknown’. I assumed that meant you just found it.”

Oscar shook his head. 

“Interesting,” Steve said. He and Tony shared a look. “I thought Jarvis transcribed everything Oscar said.”

Tony nodded slowly. “I thought so too.” 

“So maybe it’s important,” Sam said, eyeing them both. “You should talk less about letting him tell you and actually let him tell you.”

Tony gestured at Oscar to get with the telling. 

“Er-” Oscar hesitated. “Well, I was talking to this white lady, kind of pretty, and her stall was full of books and crystals and Iris--Iris, my sister, right?--she’s into that kind of thing so I say, sure, I’ll take your book. She says the book’ll make me some sort of powerful, and that magic’s not that hard, and if I manage it she’ll come back and maybe teach me a few more things herself. So I go home and Iris takes one look at the book and makes me help her with all the spells. 

“So I do, and one of them actually works, and Iris is like ten and even if she into it, she still goes to church with dad so it freaks her the hell out. So I go back to the lady, who just laughs at me and says it doesn’t have nothing to do with devil worship and to just keep on. So I do, without Iris, and by the time I think maybe I want another book I go back and the lady’s gone. No crystals, no books. Just a guy selling shoes and everyone in the other stalls thinking I’m crazy for asking about a lady they never seen.” 

At his side, Tony caught Steve nodding along and shot him a querying look. 

“That’s what he told us when we picked him up,” Steve explained. 

“Jarvis?” Tony asked. “You hear that, buddy?” 

JARVIS replied almost immediately. “I have no record of the young Mr. Thompson’s explanation within the relevant day’s logs, nor in the generated transcripts.”

Sam gave Tony and Steve his ‘guess who’s always right?’ look.

“I’ll check Jarvis for glitches,” Tony said, considering Oscar. “Nobody at all remembered the lady?” 

Oscar shook his head.

Steve let out a huff of amusement and stood, resting one hand briefly on Tony’s shoulder in both apology and reassurance. “Sam and I’ll get the dishes. You and Oscar sit tight.”

“Volunteering me?” Sam asked, even though he’d already pushed back from the table.

“Oscar’s a guest and Tony’ll break something,” Steve said. “Are you suggesting the cook scrub the pans?” 

Tony didn’t bother to protest Steve’s words. He’d managed to lose his Iron Man mug between counter and table and it contained coffee, his lifeblood. Flatware he didn’t care about stood no chance. Sam and Steve both headed for the sink, leaving Tony alone at the table with Oscar. 

Oscar and he regarded each other for a long moment. Finally, Tony said, “You didn’t say where this lady and her stall were.” 

“I guess I didn’t,” Oscar said. He mushed the remaining syrup on his plate around with his fork and tried to look nonchalant. “No place fancy. She was just down at the swap meet.”

“Swap meet,” Tony said thoughtfully. The clatter of dishes behind him made it hard to concentrate, that and the lack of sleep. Still- “That sounds like some place I should visit.”


	6. Chapter 6

Yet another apron-wearing maniac tried to hand Tony a toothpick speared through some sort of suspicious meat. Tony dodged back to avoid contact and managed to ram his elbow into a display of handmade ocarinas. The tiny turtles jangled, their little ceramic feet clicking together like wind-chimes, and the stallkeep was there in an instant with a steadying hand and a glower for the idiot endangering his wares. Tony tossed an apology in the stallkeep’s direction, scooted forward again, and hid behind a rotund man carrying a toddler. As alluring as some of the weirder stalls were, he wasn’t about to stop. He was on a sting operation. Incognito. In and out. 

Unfortunately, asphalt covered with haphazard rows of stalls stretched in all directions. The air was filled with the scents of incense and sunblock and body-odor. Tony had already been wandering in the heat in his hoodie-and-sunglasses incognito getup for an hour and a half and found eight separate stalls staffed by a ‘pretty white lady’ who sold books and crystals. He had already second- and third-guessed his decision to come alone to investigate Oscar’s story, and after the free sample of greasy gray meat, he was fourth-guessing. 

If the approaching mime whose face was melting off in the heat was any indication, he was not going to stop at four guesses. 

Tony had to admit, though, if any place was magic-user friendly, it’d be this place. One stall in five was filled with witchy and wizardy paraphernalia of some sort; some of it spiritual, some of it practical. Within line of sight as he detached himself from the crowd, Tony counted off two statuette vendors peddling altar deities and/or creatures of legend, an incense stall, a candlemaker, three booksellers (of which one was strictly ‘new age’), a jewelry store specializing in pagan symbology, a rock shop, and shoemaker. 

The shoemaker gave Tony pause. He dipped into the stall through the next break in the crowd. 

Nestled between the rock shop and a lady enthusiastically hawking silver pendants, the shoemaker’s stall was lined with leather sandals more suited to a Renaissance Festival than a swap meet. The shopkeep herself was an older white woman sporting brilliant purple hair and a nose ring, and she was wearing her own merchandise; beneath her short roman-style dress, her sandals laced all the way up her calves like a gladiator. The serviceable-looking short sword stuck through her belt scabbard gave her a bit of flair.

She greeted him with all the warmth of someone else’s grandmother. “You look a little overwarm, son.” Her nod took in his sneakers as well as his hoodie. “You looking to cool your tootsies. Let ‘em feel the breeze?”

“Just browsing,” Tony said. He poked at some of the single soles left lying around on the back table. Basic rubber. Nothing in the stall seemed to have anything to do with the mystical. This was the first shoemaker he’d found today, though, and Oscar had mentioned one replacing the book and rock shop he’d visited. Tony turned to the ‘keep and gave her a bright, flirtatious smile. “Though, I _am_ curious about how long you’ve been at the meet? I’m pretty sure I’d remember seeing you around.” 

“Rogue,” she accused him in an amiable tone. After a moment of study, she nodded and answered, “Few months. Bit less. Funny story, really. Day I moved in, I got called some ways before dawn by a pup of an organizer in a bit of panic. Seems the previous stall had pulled out in the middle of the night without telling a soul, and everyone above me on the waitlist had told off the organizer for short notice.” 

“Their loss.” Tony flicked a finger against an especially elaborate pair of sandals stamped with a fancy, vaguely Celtic serpent pattern. “Nice leathers.” 

With no sale in sight, she moved behind the register and began sorting soles into new piles. “Pleased you think so. I do boots, too, but in this heat I’d be lucky if anyone even sneezed in their direction. If you ever need a nice new pair of riding or motorcycle boots, though, you let me know. I do custom.”

Bemused, Tony said, “I will. Thanks for your time.” He turned to leave.

“Take care, Mr. Stark.” 

Tony spun back to respond, but she waved him off as another customer came into the stall to investigate her wares.

Slightly put out that his disguise was less effective than he’d hoped, Tony wandered into the next stall over to ask his questions, pushing aside dangling pewter necklaces inscribed with runes as he entered. The librarianesque shopkeep peered over her horn-rims and politely informed him that they’d only moved into the stall a couple of months ago and - even more unfortunately - that of the rest of the stalls in their particular row, only the rock shop and the shoemaker had been there prior to her. 

About to leave, Tony halted as the necklace vendor gestured him back over with one dark brown hand. 

“Unusually high turnover for an established swap meet, if you ask me,” she said, dropping her voice to a much, much softer pitch as if unwilling to be overheard. Tony leaned in to listen. “If I were a suspicious one, I’d say there was a bit of a curse- or a streak of fortune, now that I think about it. Good and bad. These few rows have had poor sales, family emergencies, or offers to buy out. One woman won a sweepstakes, lucky duck. There was even a lovely man who’d been selling his painted hubcaps here since the seventies who packed up over a weekend without nary a goodbye. Poor soul broke his leg and shipped off to live with his grandson.” 

“That’s… odd,” Tony agreed. Whereas the blanket amnesia concerning the mysterious lady that Oscar had described sounded like a load of horseshit to him, lady luck on a bender smacked of some of the shadier corporate shenanigans he’d encountered over the years. That, at least, was plausible, if moderately sinister and redolent of someone with too much power nudging pawns around a board. It wasn’t a lead, not exactly, but it was close enough. Tony thanked her for her time and headed towards the only vendor she’d pointed out as having been around long enough to provide him with any real clues. His little sting operation was threatening to become a full-blown canvas if he kept hitting dead ends, and he was already hot and sticky and regretting wearing his hoodie out in the afternoon sun. 

The rock shop had a weathered awning that sagged along the edges and a large painted sheet of plywood that declared ‘Rocks’. The shade beneath was crowded with haphazard displays of crystal and stone accompanied by tiny placards. Tony squeezed his way in past a large geode on pedestal, a flashy hunk of amethyst, and a fist-sized lump of stone sporting several large, intact spikes of quartz. The stallkeep, already dealing with another potential customer, waved at Tony to take a look around.

Tony poked about. In and among polished bits of basic semiprecious stones and fossil hunks, there were a few placards without prices and the stones themselves were in plastic cases large enough to keep someone from shoving the rock into a pocket. There was one, a stone the faded purple of a stubborn winestain, that simply said ‘Musgravite’ in sunbleached ink. Another tucked behind a display that proclaimed Dragon Eggs, was a squarish hunk of brilliant red crystal on a bed of white that said ‘Red Beryl’. 

Just as Tony was investigating the Red Beryl, the stallkeep called out, “Careful with the eggs!”

Hands up, Tony backed off immediately, though a glance over his shoulder showed the stallkeep once more engrossed with the other customer. The conversation between the two appeared to be getting somewhat agitated, though their voices were low enough that Tony would have to get blatantly close to eavesdrop. With no further admonitions forthcoming, Tony shrugged and inspected ‘eggs’ he was supposed to be careful with.

The dragon eggs looked like the kind of cut and polished novelty item that any tourists’ rock shop worth its salt carried. All of a size, some looked to have gemstones embedded in the crust, while others sprouted crystals. Several more appeared to be simple polished amethyst or agate. Each, however, were surprisingly distinctive. Bruce would appreciate the smallish granite one with its inset emeralds and purple garnets. Maria Hill would probably snap up the one that looked like someone had tie-dyed it with hematite. Tony - if he had any use for large, rather pointless rocks - would probably take the one that’s entire top was caved in to reveal the inside was a bright red crystalline geode. 

While the dragon eggs were of unusual size, though, they didn’t strike Tony as obviously delicate enough to warrant the stallkeep’s shout. 

“Every single gemstone you’ve shown me today has been flawed and you’re trying to tell me that your quality hasn’t gone down.” The agitated voice of the customer rose from the register. “Very clearly it has.” 

“We obviously ended up with a lab shipment rather than a market shipment.” The shopkeep was making soothing motions with his hands. “If you’re willing to wait-” 

“I’m not willing to stand here a moment longer and listen to you try and sell me substandard goods.” The customer raised his voice to threatening levels.

“Sir-” 

Tony braced himself to intervene, but the customer only turned and stomped out of the stall into the passing crowd. The displays rattled as he passed. He was maybe a little older than Tony, and his mustachioed face was a bright cherry red out of heat and emotion. Tony gave him a wide berth and, when he had gone, angled toward the register. 

As Tony approached, the stallkeep lifted his gaze from the register counter where he was sweeping rough diamonds into a bag and offered a nod of greeting. Tony slowed. 

The stallkeep was a stocky brown kid with a large dragon tattoo that crawled down his arm despite him looking barely a day over sixteen. He wore a pentagram necklace, a pair of thick glasses, and an impressive set of dark circles under his eyes. 

None of that was what made Tony slow, however. The tiny chalk circle on the end of the counter scattered with crystals did. The chalk figures around the rim looked awfully familiar. The flame of the half-melted candle in the center of the circle flickered in the afternoon breeze. 

Tony pointed at the kid, tilted his head, and greeted him with, “You’re from that forum. Brews of the Wyrd.” 

The kid’s friendly smile dropped away and his expression became guarded behind his thick-rimmed glasses. The bag of diamonds disappeared somewhere beneath the counter. “Can I help you?” 

“You’re one of the people who got my spell to work,” Tony said. He stuck out his hand. “MagicSux.” 

“Magic sucks-?” The kid’s wariness only increased. He stared at Tony’s outstretched hand as if it might bite. Recognition slowly kindled in his eyes, however, and the wariness shifted into something more along the lines of complete bafflement. “You’re Tony Stark.”

Tony dropped his hand and swore, pushing back his hood and unzipping his hoodie. So much for broiling himself for nothing. He shook air into his jacket and fanned himself with a hand. “Yes. Stark. Nice to meet you. I’m more interested in the fact you’re one of the Wyrdos.”

“Ah-” The kid caught up. “Ah, hell, not ‘magic sucks’, but ‘MagicSux’. You’re-” He pointed from Tony to the small candle circle. “You posted- Tony Stark? Really?” He paused, confusion writ bold across his face, and blurted. “ _How?_ ” 

“Avengers business,” Tony said, flippant, and leaned on the counter. He extended his hand again. “Tony Stark, and you are?” 

“Andrés.” He shook Tony’s hand and leaned to look past him. A glance over his own shoulder showed a similar lack of cameras or attendants or anyone at all. The stall awning flapped and rattled the frame against one of the displays, but none of the crowd flowing by outside paid them any attention. 

Andrés let out his breath in a heavy sigh, shoved his glasses back up his nose, and refocused on Tony. “If not how, man, then why? We thought you were a troll until Iona got your spell working and called me before she called the fire department.” 

“Hopefully she’s okay,” Tony said, though he’d had JARVIS keep him up to date on the whole ‘burning apartment’ situation. He suppressed a grin. “But you guys are as close to practitioners of Asgardian magic as I could find.” 

“Asgardian.” Andrés’ eyes grew large. “Shit, really? We’re, like - only half of us even seriously thought magic real. Asgardians are… aliens, right? They’re aliens.” 

“Aliens? In a manner of speaking.” Tony made himself comfortable against the register counter. Gingerly. Chalk had drifted into the cracks and both Andrés’ elbow and the side of his shirt were liberally dusted. “But belief in the functionality of magic was one of the variables I’ve been trying to track.” 

“But aliens?” Andrés repeated. He turned a look of horror on his little candle circle. “This is the shit that jacked up New York. That Loki guy was Asgardian.” 

“Hey, hey, hold up,” Tony put a hand out before Andrés could sweep the chalk circle off of his counter. “I need to know how to counter Asgardian magic, and to do that, I need data.”

“We’re guinea pigs?”

Tony halted and sucked in his breath. “Not in so many words. Er-” Cap would definitely give him the stinkeye to hear him admit ‘yes, you’re totally my research subjects’, as would Tony’s lawyers and the board of Psychology and probably whatever remnant of SHIELD Agent Hill carried about in her pocket. Jarvis trying to talk him out of using the forums suddenly made a great deal more sense. At the skeptical expression on Andrés’ face, Tony smiled bright enough to blind and barreled forward. “You’re more independent researchers providing corroborating evidence, if you want to talk semantics. Amature magicologists. I published for peer review.”

“Magicolo-?” 

“Science of magic. You’ve gotten it to work, I take it?” 

Andrés blinked a few times. “Ah, yeah. It’s not too hard. Less than I thought it would be.” 

“Great!” Tony said, over-bright and only the teeniest bit resentful. “Up for a demonstration?” 

Surprised at the question, Andrés’ agreement was a tentative, “Sure?” Tony’s smile didn’t waver, though, and that seemed to be enough to convince him that the question was serious. Like a kid at a science fair accosted by the judges while at the drinking fountain, he flopped a hand in the direction of his setup and adjusted his glasses nervously. “Sure,” he repeated. “I mean, here’s the spell. Like, it’s pretty easy.” 

To Tony’s eye, the chalk circle was as straightforward as it got. The figures were inexpert, the circle itself was wobbly, and the candle looked to have seen better days even before it had been lit. He studied the tableau for differences between what he’d done and what Andrés had succeeded with, but there weren’t very many differences and most of those were removable. Tony flicked at a hunk of cloudy quartz the size of his thumb. “Are the gemstones necessary?” 

“Naw.” Andrés licked his fingers and pinched out the candle flame. “It’s just good for business, you know? Or is supposed to be. This part of the meet has a lot of people coming through here for spiritual aids.” Andrés picked up the chalk and went over one of the smudgier lines a few times. 

“Supposed to be good for business? It’s not?” Tony asked as Andrés studied his work.

“Well, business’s not been so hot for the last few months. Suppliers all send the wrong shipments. Normally easy buyers get mad and run off.” Andrés gestured out of the stall with his chin while he rearranged the gemstones around the circle. “That guy? Been buying from us for years, no problemo. Last three months? Nothing we do is right, and it’s the same with everyone we sell to.”

“That seems to be going around.” Tony glanced toward the shoemaker’s stall next door. 

“Yeah, and there goes my job with it.” Andrés made a face and shoved his glasses up his nose with a thumb. “Funny thing, though. The bossman doesn’t know anything about the stuff I sell. He just sets stuff out. Like that red beryl you were looking at. Worth thousands, and we’re at a swap meet. I’m afraid to put the price on it. And he just keeps sending more and more expensive things, like those dragon eggs over there, and saying that maybe _this_ will interest buyers. Interesting is not our problem. Bad luck for months is our problem.” 

“Doesn’t seem like bossman knows your demographic very well,” Tony said. He swept his gaze over the contents of the stall again and mentally tallied up the ‘worth thousands’ of every chunk of rock that he’d found without a price tag. From the look of the merchandise, that whole bag of diamonds thing he’d walked in on, and the kind of people drifting past out on the asphalt avenue, the only real reason they should be in trouble of shutting down was pricing up and out of the general swap-meet-deals-get-them-while-they’re-hot range. Though, if the diamond buyer was any indication, they’d already found their niche. Selling diamonds and beryl was a hell of a summer job to land no matter where the shopfront was located. Tony remarked, “You’re pretty young to be captaining the ship.” 

“Eighteen in October,” Andrés said, finally stepping back from the candle with a satisfied expression. “Gonna go to school for geology, if I can, and I think bossman likes having someone around just as excited as he is over some of the rocks he brings back. Bossman travels a lot. Real far-off places, from the sound of it, and he’s not so good with people.”

“And you are,” Tony said, amused. 

Andrés grin was modest, and he shrugged a shoulder. “I do okay. Candle’s ready, though, if you are.” 

Tony took another good look at the candle circle, but Andrés hadn’t changed much while they were talking. The chalk figures were thicker and clearer, and the wax that had melted down over the containing circles had been scraped up and the line laid down once more. He made a mental note and gestured for Andrés to continue. “Whenever.” 

The protest Andrés had made about only half the other forumers being believers didn’t apply to him. His casting preparation had the confidence of habit. He wrapped one hand around his pentagram necklace, his thumb on the front face of the disc, and breathed a small prayer that seemed to steady him. Tony didn’t catch all the words, mostly because they were in Spanish. It definitely wasn’t a prayer to any of the Asgardians. 

Andrés raised his other hand, let out his breath, and snapped his fingers. The candle flame sprung to life with a faint pop. 

Just like magic.

The two of them stared at the flame for several long seconds. 

“How ‘bout that,” Tony said. There were a hundred and more tiny details that didn’t come through on the videos that the Wyrdos had uploaded, nor were part of his data for any of his other encounters with magic. Like that popping noise that was almost more felt than heard. Air displacement? The result of ignition? “Can you do it again?” 

“What do you think I’ve been doing all day?” Andrés asked. “You figure out how to do real live magic and see how obsessed you get with it.” 

“Preachin’ to the choir,” Tony said and blew the candle out. He looked at Andrés expectantly. 

This time Andrés didn’t pray. He just exhaled and snapped his fingers. 

Snap. Faint pop. Flame.

The effect appeared simultaneous to the naked eye and Tony swallowed the demand for another repeat as a mother-daughter pair browsing the swap meet rambled into the stall and began to poke around. Their presence reminded Tony why he originally had come to the swap meet: not to grill a teen about his magic abilities, but to figure out their source. 

Andrés dropped his hand and greeted the customers over Tony’s shoulder as if he hadn’t just been performing impossible feats. When the two responded with a cheerful duet of ‘just looking!’, he relaxed and leaned against the register counter. He glanced nonchalantly over his shoulder and said, “As much fun as showing an Avenger my mad skills with candles, I should probably get back to minding the stall.”

Tony recognized a suggestion to bug off when he heard one. His eyebrows rose. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” 

This time, when Andrés looked over his shoulder, Tony followed his gaze toward a man with the look of a Pacific Islander and who was wearing a vest and a cravat. Tony had to lift his sunglasses and rub his eyes to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing, but no - the man looked like he’d stepped straight of New York high society in the 1900s, complete with hightop shoes with spats. All the man needed was a decorative cane and a top hat. 

“So, my boss doesn’t know about the whole pagan thing, let alone magic.” Andrés tucked his necklace into his shirt and gave Tony a small, pained smile. “So if you’d not mention it to him, ever, I’d really appreciate it. He’s… old-fashioned?” 

“Maybe just a little,” Tony agreed, following the stall owner’s progress with his eyes. “One last question before I go, though. Do you remember who used to be in the stall next door before the shoemaker moved in?” 

“Uh-” The vast majority of Andrés’s previous self-confidence had fled in the face of being revealed to his boss. He answered quickly, hardly pausing to think. “No, I- I don’t remember much. I know it was a white lady, and I remember being kind of pissed off that she was selling crystals and stuff because that’s our thing, you know?” The stall owner in his eccentric costume drew closer and Andrés started to shoo Tony out, much to Tony’s amusement. “I remember more of Bossman’s rants about her than I do about her. Like, not even her name. Bossman keeps referring to her as ‘The Enchantress’, but it sounds more like a title than him trying to be a dick about her.” 

“The Enchantress?” Tony asked. His speculative gaze once more drifted to the approaching stall owner in his eccentric outfit. “What’s his name?” 

“You’re not leaving, are you?” Andrés asked. 

Tony lifted one shoulder and gave Andrés a rueful grin. 

Defeated, Andrés folded his arms on the counter and buried his face in them. His answer was muffled. “Nigel Erikson.”

Tony patted Andrés on the shoulder, gave him a surreptitious thumbs up in reassurance, and spun to greet the approaching stall owner. “Mr. Erikson, I presume?” 

Nigel Erikson face split into a large, friendly grin, his gaze skipping over Andrés with a flicker and taking stock of his stall with a practiced eye. He tipped an imaginary hat at the just-leaving women before giving Tony his full regard. “I am indeed Erikson, proprietor of this-” he began. His grin froze, however, the moment he registered just who was speaking to him. “-Ah. Avenger.” 

“Avenger?” Tony repeated. Of all of his many and varied qualities, ‘Avenger’ wasn’t usually at the top of the first-impressions list, especially not when he was wearing a sweaty hoodie and a pair of aviators. That was the title usually reserved when he was fully suited up and tromping about with the team. A smile sprung to Tony’s face and turned sharp. He extended his hand. “Tony Stark.” 

Nigel Erikson hesitated briefly before he shook Tony’s hand. “Charmed. A true pleasure to host such an illustrious personage such as yourself in my humble venue. Are you perhaps interested in rare curiosities?”

“My curiosity actually runs more toward information on your former neighbor. A bookseller?” Tony glanced over at Andrés, who was gritting his teeth and trying not to fidget. “Andrés here says you’ve mentioned her once or twice.” 

“Oh-” Nigel Erikson’s forehead furrowed for a bare moment before his mood catapulted skyward once more. His expression cleared and he relaxed. Something very much like relief colored his words. “Oh! Oh, yes, of course! The bookseller. The Enchantress is a wily one, and I, for one, am glad she is quite gone. Is this- is this perhaps Avenger’s business you are on, my good man?” 

Tony spread his hands to indicate his less-than-polished appearance and said, “You could say this is an unofficial visit.” 

“Ah, yes, yes. Say no more.” Nigel Erikson tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. “I understand. What would you like to know?” 

“Did this ‘Enchantress’ seem weird to you in any way? Did she sell much?” Tony asked. 

Nigel Erikson’s hesitated, chewing over his response. He picked up a geode and fiddled with it while he thought, setting it down with care when he was finally ready to answer. “Truth be told, Man of Iron, she was a bit of an odd fish. She kept short hours and took long breaks - it is truly a miracle that none of her wares were stolen, as she was absent more often than not. She also appeared very particular about what patrons she chose to approach, always with a tome of her selecting. The young, I think. Or the impressionable, as youth and impressionability do not always go hand in hand. I was not here often, I’m afraid, but she had the scent of a predator when I saw her in action, if you’ll forgive my poesy.”

“Did you ever speak with her?” 

“I did not. My occupations at that time were unrelenting in their need of my attention, and I am - if you’ll forgive me - not the most sociable of creatures. If I were to be honest, I am a poor neighbor indeed. Three entire months the shoemaker next door has been with us and I have yet to make her acquaintance. Andrés here has become very near the official face of my endeavor, and is far more likely to have the appropriate intelligence for your purposes.” Nigel Erikson gestured at Andrés with a flick of his fingers. 

Andrés gave Tony a pained smile. 

Tony tried not to laugh. If nothing else, Natasha needed to come have a chat with ‘Nigel Erikson’ and find out if he somehow missed being put on SHIELD’s list of known extraterrestrials or if he really was just ridiculously eccentric. His seeming immunity to whatever plagued the swap meet, however, put Tony’s opinion firmly on the side of ‘alien’. With just a hint of bite, Tony observed, “For not being here often, you have a great many opinions about this Enchantress.” 

Flustered, Nigel said, “She- she was bad for business. According to the young Andrés, she had the habit of luring our patrons right out of the shop with her shoddy stones. Is that not right, Andrés?” 

The blank look on Andrés face spoke volumes. When he realized that they were waiting for some sort of response, however, Andrés shrugged slightly and shook his head. 

After a moment of thought, Tony began to ask, “Do you have any experience with magi-” 

His question was interrupted by a faint pop, like too rapid of an altitude change in the suitcase suit, and Andrés’s cried, “The crystals again!” 

“Odi- Zounds,” Nigel Erikson swore as he hurried to a display of clear, polished crystals to stamp out the tiny lick of flame sending smoke up into the peak of the stall’s awning. Andrés was a step behind with a scrap of blanket that looked too char-pocked to have been behind the register by luck. The fire was quickly smothered, fast enough that Tony had gone barely a step toward assisting. Nigel Erikson turned and waved him off. “Never fear, never fear. This is an all-too-common occurrence, I am afraid. No matter how deeply into the shade we put those things, they invariably attract a stray sunbeam and burn a hole into their own display. An alarming lack of self-preservation, if you ask me, though no-one ever does.” His last comment ended upon a dark and pointed note, though as far as Tony could tell it was pointed toward nobody in particular. 

Andrés stood just behind Nigel Erikson with a determined look on his face and a wide-eyed stare directed so firmly at Tony it was a wonder he didn’t set him on fire instead. 

As wholly unnecessary as chasing him off was, Tony took the hint. He cleared his through and said, “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Erikson. Andrés. It’s been great, but I promised Pepper dinner and I really should…” He gestured out of the tent. 

The look of relief mirrored on Andrés and Nigel Erikson’s faces would be funny if Tony hadn’t been slightly offended. Nigel Erikson even went so far as to declare, “Ah, yes! I do hope you shall not be late? Here- oh, yes, here, take the charming Madam Potts a gift from me in preemptive apology.” 

“I couldn’t-” Tony tried to protest.

“Nonsense. Sheer nonsense. It’s the least I could do. Here. Let me find-” Nigel Erikson turned from Tony to busy himself with a nearby display. 

At the opportunity, Tony shot an incredulous glare at Andrés and mouthed, “How?” He tipped his head toward the unlit candle and the chalk circle. 

Andrés opened his mouth, closed it, and gave Tony a frustrated grimace before finally just miming a chalk circle with his hand and saying, “Training wheels.” 

“Training whats?” Nigel Erikson asked as he came forward with one of the dragon eggs in his hands. When Andrés shook his head and Tony’s polite smile didn’t waver, he shrugged and offered the stone to Tony. “Here. This one will suit.” 

The dragon egg was a smooth, polished agate about the size of a basketball. Grey, black, and white striations were highlighted by strips of shimmering red opal, and - unlike some of the other eggs - the ‘shell’ of this one remained intact, making it look very much like the egg Nigel Erikson declared it. Even Tony agreed it was a handsome specimen, and the one he might have picked out for Pepper himself if he thought about it. There was no time for him to protest his dislike of being handed things. Nigel simply held it out to him and released. 

Tony caught the egg in self-defense rather than let it crush his toes. It was far heavier than he expected, even for solid stone. “I can’t accept this,” he said in consternation. “This isn’t exactly a free sample.” 

“And that is precisely the reason you mustn’t refuse.” Nigel Erikson’s satisfied expression was somewhat disconcerting. It was a little too close to smug for Tony’s liking. “It is a gift, from me to you. Or from me to the illustrious Madam Potts, if she desires it. It is a gift that must be accepted or refused, I’m afraid. Confirmed guardianship is quite important if you wish it to hatch.”

“I feel like I could shatter concrete with this thing,” Tony said as he cradled the egg closer to his ribs. A step behind Nigel Erikson, Andrés stood in shock, his eyes wide and fixed on the back of his boss’s head. Before Tony could comment, however, the stone began to warm with his body heat. Not just a ‘no-longer-cold’ warming, but a swift temperature change up to somewhere near his body temperature. Thermal conduction through quartz did not happen on this scale with this rapidity, and the dragon’s egg was already starting to radiate warmth back at Tony through his shirt. Tony quickly held the egg out at arm’s length again and said, alarmed. “You can’t really mean ‘hatch’.” 

“Thus is the nature of eggs, as I am sure you are aware, Man of Iron,” Nigel Erikson said. “Most of the rest are duds, much to my misfortune, but I do believe that this one had sufficient vitality to finish its development now that it has been gifted.” 

“But it’s just a rock.” Tony’s protest felt weak even to his own ears. Where his skin was in contact with the egg, it remained hot enough to be strangely pleasant. He followed his complaint with an immediate, “Forget I said that, that was a stupid thing to say.”

Nigel Erikson’s smile grew wider. “Perhaps you begin to believe? Keep the creature at your side and as warm as your own skin, speak with it through the shell, and let it get to know you. You may ultimately be blessed with a dragon hatchling in mere weeks.”

Andrés finally shook out of his shock-induced paralysis and choked out, “That sounds like magic.” 

After a pause, Nigel Erikson said, “Perhaps it is, at that.” He hummed beneath his breath in thought. “There is an art to hatching such a steed. Without a guardian over its final days in the shell, a dragon is loathe to hatch. It will simply wait in a stasis of its own design.” 

“I’ll, er- take that under advisement,” Tony said. The thought of refusing the egg once more crossed his mind, except- whatever else was going on with the strange not-quite-stone of the dragon egg was fascinating in and of itself. The possibilities of advancing material science in studying the chemical composition of a ‘rock’ that could absorb and re-emit body heat with the kind of speed it had already illustrated… well, it was a neat party trick. One he wished he had up his sleeve. He huffed a laugh and gave in. “Thank you?”

“You need not sound so dubious.” Nigel Erikson’s eyes glittered with sharp amusement at odds with his fumbling surprise from earlier. “You are indeed welcome. Though if I may, Andrés and I have a great deal to accomplish and I am in New York but for a brief span.”

“I was just going,” Tony said. He tucked the egg back against his side and gritted his teeth against the unnatural heat it gave off. He needed a full scan on the thing as soon as possible and to drop a line to Natasha. She needed to get down here for a little window-shopping before the old Nigel Erikson left for far-off places once more. Tony tipped his head toward the candle circle near the register and winked at Andrés. “Good luck with your displays.” 

Andrés gave him an anxious little wave, but Nigel Erikson simply watched Tony with an avid expression as he wove back out between rocks and pedestals and back into the sweltering sunlight. Tony might be used to the relief that sometimes accompanied his exit, but usually the mass shoulder-slumpage was not accompanied by an unwavering stare designed to make sure he was really, truly gone. After making sure he didn’t trip over an inconveniently placed statuette, Tony glanced back over his shoulder to find Nigel Erikson with the same polite, neutral smile plastered on his face as when he’d said farewell. Tony got the feeling he hadn’t blinked. 

Popping out into the crowded thoroughfare with his attention still inside the rockshop, Tony nearly ran over a stroller. The lady pushing it glowered at him as he made his apologies and took off toward the swap meet exit. The moment he was out of sight of Nigel Erikson and his eerie stare, Tony fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed the tower. 

“Bruce?” he asked when it was picked up. “Yeah, long story- could you look at the contact list and give me the digits for Natasha’s current burner? Last time I had JARVIS find me her number, I spent ten minutes calling the inside of a dumpster off of seventh and another twenty convincing the lady who fished me out that she wasn’t in a spy film, her family was fine, and I didn’t have any orders for her.” 

Tony tried to juggle the egg and the phone and find his keys as he listened to Bruce’s reply. “You know, I’m pretty sure Natasha uses burners to spite me and my promises of a secure line. She knows it drives me nuts.” He unlocked the sedan he’d borrowed from SI’s fleet of boring commuter vehicles. “It should be right next to Cap’s training schedule. Can you look under the grocery list? No, I don’t know why we have one either. Clint keeps adding things by hand and Natasha told me off for trying to take it down.” 

As soon as Bruce rattled the string of numbers into his ear, Tony said his farewells and hung up. He dialed Natasha after he buckled the dragon’s egg into the passenger seat. 

Natasha’s casual greeting was music to his ears. With as much nonchalance as he could muster, he skipped his hellos and asked, “So what would you say if I told you I found a possible Asgardian at the swap meet today? Think you want to check it out?” He absently patted the egg with his free hand.

Natasha’s affirmative carried more than her usual interest. Tony grinned. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”


	7. Chapter 7

“So, I’m pretty sure it’s not a bomb,” Tony said as he leaned back from his workbench. Pepper hovered at his shoulder, dressed for dinner. Her tiny fancy purse sat next to his suit jacket, both mostly forgotten and - in the jacket’s case - dusted with chalk from the quite-frankly _sad _cleanup DUM-E had performed while Tony was gone. “I’m not ruling it out, mind, but none of the components are, strictly speaking, explosively volatile even when combined.”__

__Pepper leaned on the edge of the workbench to get a closer look at the egg. “Do you think it’s really a dragon?”_ _

__“Alien, definitely,” Tony said. On the nearest floating display, he had the egg’s temperature graph. The line was steadily going down despite the incubation lamps he had trained on the impromptu nest of insulation and sand from his fire bucket. “Dragon? Well - I’m going to go with no, actually. First, never trust a salesman, especially a possibly alien salesman. Second, we’ve named pretty much everything lizardy on earth some variation of dragon. Komodo dragon. Bearded dragon. Hell, we’ve got the whole Agamidae family, which pretty much are all dragon-this and dragon-that. Dollars to donuts, this is less myth and more a big lizard.”_ _

__“Big?” Pepper asked. They turned to regard the foot-tall egg._ _

__“ _Very_ big.” He paused. “You like lizards, don’t you?” _ _

__“How big is big?” She reached out to touch the egg on the table. The moment her fingers touched the outside of the shell the display next to Tony chirruped as the egg’s temperature spiked. Without a visible change in the egg itself, however, Pepper didn’t notice. She simply ran her fingers over the opalescent stripes on the shell. “Are we talking B-movie big?”_ _

__Tony kept one eye on the temperature monitor and waved another holographic display around for Pepper to see. “We’re talking dinosaur big. Extinct Australian megafauna big. The egg size is comparable to the moa, and one of that particular family was twelve feet tall as an adult. So if we fudge some of the numbers and take into account that the ten-foot Komodo comes out of an egg about the size of my hand, well, we’re talking about a lizard crawling out of that thing that may someday be as large as a draft horse. Gives a whole new spin on that ‘give me one of those big enough to ride’ story that Thor and Jane like to tell, don’t you think? Especially if Mr. Nigel Erikson really does turn out to be Asgardian.”_ _

__Images scrolled the display. Of giant emu- and cassowary-like birds towering over a tiny simulation of a human very sensibly running and screaming._ _

__“Nice touch. Very Jurassic Park,” Pepper said dryly. “I can’t believe he gave it to you, though. Just like that.”_ _

__“I’m pretty sure I don’t trust him,” Tony said. “That’s why Natasha’s out doing her whole spy thing.”_ _

__Pepper was silent for a long moment. “And he said it was for me?”_ _

__“If you want it, but you know that whole trust thing I just mentioned? I’m worried it wasn’t the nice kind of gift.”_ _

__“I don’t really have time for big lizards,” Pepper said, but she sounded conflicted._ _

__“You barely have time for me.”_ _

__Pepper laughed and let the hand she’d been petting the egg with rest on its crown. The temperature chart peaked and leveled out. “You’re the one who called me to cancel tonight on account of dragons, Mr. Avenger.”_ _

__Tony made a small noise of agreement and smiled. Pepper smiled back and they shared a silent moment of amusement._ _

__Soon enough, her attention drifted back to the egg and Tony let his smile drop as studied her. The past few years had been rough on Pepper, and she’d never admit to it, but coming to terms her capacity for violence and her brush with death by way of Extremis had shifted things for her, and it always surprised him when and where her cracks showed. Like not so much as blinking at Jane’s ‘dying at the time’ comment. Like her efforts to get them both out of the tower so they weren’t simply co-habitating while they melted down inside. Like her pointed suggestions that the Maria Stark Foundation add PTSD support charities to their benefit roster - and not just because of Sam Wilson’s influence._ _

__Tony recognized the look on her face. Right now, Pepper was thinking very loudly about Extremis._ _

__“So do you want it?” Tony interrupted her._ _

__Pepper startled. Her hand jerked off the egg and she had to catch herself before she fell from her seat on the edge of the workbench. Eyes wide, a note of alarm in her voice, she asked, “Want what?”_ _

__“The egg,” Tony said, gaze steady. “What else are we talking about?”_ _

__“I was a million miles away.” Pepper took a deep breath, a hand to her chest. Her cheeks were flushed, but she answered almost immediately. “Yes, yes, I think I do.” The temperature warning beeped as the egg began to cool._ _

__“Good.” Tony paused. “Good. Now, obviously, the thing will have a home here at the tower where the Avengers can keep an eye on it, and I’m going to have to keep it here in the lab while it cooks so I can monitor it, and I’d really like to be there when it hatches just to make sure it’s not going to eat everyone right out of the shell, but you can name it.”_ _

__Pepper gave Tony an amused look, her mouth twisted to the side. “That doesn’t sound like a gift for me at all. Are you giving me twelve percent of a dragon? Is that what this is? Because we’ve gone through this before and it didn’t end well for you, if I recall.”_ _

__“Of course not,” Tony said with a grin. “It’s just that you just said you were busy, and this is heavy alien mojo we’re working here. The lab’s the best place for it. I mean, I could be wrong about the lizard. We don’t want headcrabs and chestbursters loose in Manhattan.”_ _

__“That sounds almost logical…” Pepper said._ _

__Tony waited for the rest. When Pepper only looked at him expectantly, he prompted, “But?”_ _

__“But you’re going to get Bruce down here and I won’t see you until your new toy hatches.”_ _

__“You wound me.” Tony placed a melodramatic hand over his chest scar._ _

__Pepper was unsympathetic. “I know you.”_ _

__Tony’s reply was lost when JARVIS interrupted them with a smooth, “A call, sir, from Mistress Romanoff. Shall I put her through?”_ _

__“Absolutely,” Tony said immediately, waving one of the holo-displays front and center. Natasha’s face appeared a moment later in the high-fidelity of a Starkphone Tony was ninety-nine percent sure he’d never given her. Instead of hello, he said, “Did you steal some poor sap’s phone?”_ _

__“If by ‘poor sap’ you mean Clint, then yes. Though, I’d say ‘borrowed’ is a better term. I’ll return it before he wakes from his nap. You don’t care, though.”_ _

__“Not unless this is a hint I need to set up a Starkphone for you.”_ _

__“Nope. You want my assessment or not?”_ _

__Pepper leaned into the picture behind Tony and waved. “Natasha!”_ _

__“Pepper,” Natasha said, the smile on her face as good as her jumping up and down and waving in excitement. “I’ve been meaning to catch you. I’m missing lunch on Friday.”_ _

__Squeezing Tony’s shoulder in a signal that he should keep his mouth shut, Pepper made a few disappointed noises. “We’ll miss you, but it happens.”_ _

__Tony squinted up at Pepper. “She has a club card too, doesn’t she?”_ _

__Natasha looked faintly scandalized. “You weren’t supposed to show him.”_ _

__Holding up a finger, Pepper indicated for Natasha to wait a moment, and in her ‘argue-with-me-and-you’ll-discover-how-sharp-I-keep-my-stilettos’ voice, said to Tony, “Of course she does. Nobody is more embroiled in superheroics than she is.”_ _

__Pepper dropped her finger and offered an apologetic smile toward the screen. “Sorry, Natasha. What did you find out?”_ _

__After a pause, and with a shake of her head that encompassed both of them, Natasha began her mission report._ _

__“I managed to catch Nigel Erikson before he left for the day, but only just. Preliminary assessment based on the other aliens SHIELD has encountered, I say that he definitely fits the profile for alien, and—narrowing it down—for the Nine Realms specifically, if not Asgard itself. I’ve got more investigation to do, though, now that I’m reasonably certain that it won’t be a waste of resources.” Here Natasha hesitated. “Maybe let me beat the bushes a little before you ask Thor? I want some time before he tries to invite the target out for drinks.”_ _

__“Because he’ll want to immediately, because he’s Thor.” Tony said, glancing up at Pepper where she stood just behind him. “You think it’s likely this guy’s going to earn a hammer to face?”_ _

__Natasha shook her head. “Unknown across the board. What I am worried about is that egg. There’s insufficient information to suggest his intent, but until I know where he came from and why he is here, treat the thing with caution.”_ _

__“It’s in the lab,” Tony said. The screen shifted with his expansive gesture to give her a view of the mocked up incubation setup on the workbench. The temperature warning beeped at him sadly._ _

__“I’m not sure if that’s the best possible place for it or the worst,” Natasha said, making a face. “Also, Clint never charges his damn phone. I’ve maybe a minute.”_ _

__Tony looked up at Pepper again and she wiggled her fingers at him. The surface of her palm was covered in chalk from hopping up on the workbench. He snapped his fingers and pointed at her hand. “Right. Chalk. Natasha? Did the, er, target say anything about an ‘Enchantress’?”_ _

__“Negative, but the term sounds like one of the descriptive sobriquets the Asgardians are so fond of.” The scenery behind her began to move as she started walking. People in the background were wearing the sun hats and sweaty t-shirts Tony had been surrounded by earlier in the day. Natasha _hrmed_ briefly in thought. “Is your question about Oscar? Sam said something about the book being found at a swap meet.” _ _

__“Got it in one,” Tony said._ _

__Natasha nodded, both her head and the camera bobbing. “I’ll keep my ear to the ground, maybe dig through some of old SHIELD’s classified files. Though, really, SHIELD seems to have had a blind spot where Asgardians are concerned.” She grimaced._ _

__Pepper placed one hand on either of Tony’s shoulders and leaned over him toward the call display to speak. “That sounds like there’s a story behind it.”_ _

__“Convince Maria to break me through some of her personal encryptions and I’ll give you the rundown,” Natasha replied with a grin._ _

__Pepper’s smile was very polite and very sharp. “I’ll see what I can do.”_ _

__“It’s a deal,” Natasha said. An angry electronic chirp came over the line and Natasha wrinkled her nose in dismay. “Gotta go. Clint’s phone is-”_ _

__The connection died and her image winked out. The holo-display reverted to showing a cluster of mostly-irrelevant graphs and charts monitoring the egg._ _

__“It should have beeped more than once before it died,” Tony said. He twisted in his chair so he could face Pepper. “Am I allowed to write an angry letter to myself?”_ _

__“I’ll proofread.” Pepper humored him. “But maybe steal Clint’s in particular and find out what he did to it first.” She moved away from him once more and hopped back up onto the worktable to sit next to the egg._ _

__Before she could touch it, though, Tony pushed himself off of his stool and grabbed a welding glove. “Put this on really quick and then try.”_ _

__Pepper shrugged and pulled the glove on. She then placed her gloved hand on the egg. Much to Tony’s dismay, the egg’s temperature continued its very slow, very steady fall._ _

__“I think we have a problem,” Tony said. He gestured for her to take the glove off. This time when she reached out to touch the egg again, the temperature spiked and his monitor beeped. Now that he’d drawn attention to monitor, it didn’t take Pepper long to reach the same conclusion he had._ _

__“It needs to be touching human skin?” Pepper asked. “The lights don’t do anything?”_ _

__“Well, the guy said to keep it by my side at the temperature of my skin. Hell—” Tony rubbed at his face. “It was all very ‘don’t get it wet and don’t feed after midnight’, and just about as enlightening. I’m thinking Asgard works a little bit by fairytale rules, sometimes, which sucks, because fairytales require all sorts of nonsense that makes no sense. Magic or science, though, with what evidence we have, I think the egg needs to be babysat until it hatches.”_ _

__“That’s going to be a problem,” Pepper said after a moment. “Taking sick days is not something I can afford to do right now.”_ _

__“And I can’t very well take an egg of any size—even one masquerading as a rock—with me in the suit if something happens.”_ _

__Pepper pulled the foot-tall egg into her lap and wrapped her arms around it, heedless of the chalk getting all over her dress and the smudges of goo and grease on the egg leftover from Tony’s initial testing. She held up one finger when Tony opened his mouth to speak and indicated that he should wait. He did. Or he tried._ _

__She looked oddly regal as she thought, her forehead furrowed just slightly as she curled around her dragon egg, her face and hair ready for a night of paparazzi and five-star restaurants. Under the lab’s fluorescents, her bare arms were illuminated from below by the reflective red from the egg’s stripes of opal, and the effect was eerily similar to the inner radiance of Extremis._ _

__After about ten seconds, Tony said, “The tower is full of people, I’m sure we can find someone.”_ _

__“People who are all very busy and that doesn’t solve the ‘Avengers’ part of the problem. No, but I think I have a solution that doesn’t involve bringing in strangers.”_ _

__“Care to share?” Tony asked._ _

__Pepper tipped her head. “I’m having lunch with Jane on Friday and I’ll just ask if I can borrow Darcy. I bet you twenty bucks she’d would love to be involved in all this nonsense again.”_ _

__“Darcy.” Tony boggled at Pepper for a moment, then swept his gaze across the room. In addition to the pile of spellcasting paraphernalia and the failure of an incubation setup, he had partial projects everywhere begging for the cat-curious Darcy to investigate. The last time Jane had brought her with her on a visit, Darcy had managed to destabilize one of Tony’s circuits by modifying the stray capacitance with a well-placed jab and a ‘what’s this’? It had taken him several hours to figure out how the subsequent electric fizzle-pop that had left a blue haze in his lab was even _possible_. _ _

__Pepper was right, though, Darcy was in the top three or four people on the planet with direct experience with Asgardians and everything that meant. Her metaphorical ‘clearance’ was higher than half of SHIELD’s former agents._ _

__Still._ _

__“The lab isn’t Darcy-proof.”_ _

__“You have until Friday.” Pepper rested her chin on the top of the egg. “Because I’m pretty sure I can have her in New York by Friday evening, and you are going to be tired of carrying around this massive rock for several days straight.” The temperature monitor held steady at proper incubation levels and Pepper looked not at all worried about their missed reservation._ _

__Tony found himself smiling. Pepper ready to set up camp and willing to participate was a novelty. He’d expected her to react negatively to their canceled date, to be more exasperated at the very least, but this..._ _

__They had a lot of work to do. They’d get take-out and analyze the dragon egg and maybe watch one of those old black and white movies Bruce had been sneaking into JARVIS’s databanks and make a night of it, something they hadn’t managed recently beyond scheduled dates. Not with their separate, busy lives._ _

__He gave an imperious wave and had JARVIS call out for Thai. “You underestimate my ability to delegate.”_ _

__When she only huffed a laugh in response, his smile widened into a brief grin and he leaned over the egg to kiss her._ _


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original estimate of final post date was hilariously ambitious. Posting will continue at a much more sedate pace as I tidy things up!

Jane’s lunch sat half-eaten before her as she fended the waiter off with her fork for the fourth time. “Not done yet,” she said with a smile, though her enchiladas were long cold. She and Pepper had been taking up the table for an hour and a half already, and every time the poor waiter came by Pepper mentally added another few dollars to his tip. 

The mid-day rush had died out, at least, and someone kept bringing her horchata, so Pepper didn’t feel too badly. With everyone back to work in the surrounding high-rises, the other ten tables were empty and at least two of the employees were calling farewell as they headed out the door. 

The tiny Mexican place had been one of Bruce’s recommendations, and her chile rellenos had been divine. Everything she’d ordered had been spicy enough to make her sweat, and she had put away two entrees while Jane gesticulated and explained her latest theories. For the food alone, it was a pity Natasha couldn’t make the meet.

Though, if she were being perfectly fair, even though their Juggling club technically met regularly, over half the group always sent their condolences for any given event. Pepper was the only one to go to most of them, and that was only because she had a habit of scheduling her weeks to death in the first place. Everyone was always busy, herself included and, all considered, it was why they had the club in the first place.

“As I was saying.” Jane waited until after the waiter wandered away to pick back up. “I’m not saying it’s strictly possible that we’re only a handful of years away from implementing some sort of local teleportation-wormhole-quantum entanglement thing on earth. Or that it’s even likely that we will. I’m saying that there’s a theoretical foundation to the idea that we might be able to adapt some of the research on the whole Bifrost phenomenon to planet-localized transport.” 

“You mean I might not have to fly between meetings?” Pepper asked idly. “Because I am in the air constantly.” 

“I mean, I don’t think airplanes will become obsolete, but yeah. Why not?” Jane bobbed her head enthusiastically and shoveled a forkful of enchilada into her mouth. Covering her mouth with one hand while she chewed, she swallowed and continued, “It’s straight up science fiction, but honestly I think if we--as a scientific community--could figure out how to make the absolutely epic scale of the whole wormhole-from-across-space-and-possibly-dimensions plus weather side effects, I think it’s very possible we could discover how to safely transport people short distances.” She paused. “Shorter distances. I mean, Los Angeles to New York isn’t a short distance, except if you’re talking about ‘in comparison’. Comparison from Asgard to wherever, comparison.” 

Pepper laughed. “I will be the absolute first person to fund any sort of practical research, because having Headquarters in LA and the tower here means I lose whole days if I’m not careful.”

“You’re always careful,” Jane teased her. “Tell me you don’t take red-eyes ninety-nine percent of the time.” 

“Would be easier if I could take a suit.”

She had meant it as a joke, but Jane gave her a knowing look. The chuckle on Pepper’s lips died an awkward death.

Pepper avoided her eyes. “Speaking of headquarters, you need to come to SI sometime when you’re in town for an official visit.” She changed the subject using the smooth, practiced tone she’d herded cats in the boardroom with more than once. “I mentioned last time we were out that I talked Maria into showing me some of the classified information?”

Jane laughed, and for a moment Pepper thought she might pursue the subject, but after another forkful of her lunch, she nodded in agreement. “I’m more than a little curious at what she showed you. Asgardian tech they’ve scooped up? Data on other aliens?” She waved off Pepper’s answer. “I’ve got an inkling. Better than that, I’ve got a prototype in my purse that is just waiting for an insight so it’ll do more than induce biofeedback and make playing living statue really easy. Maybe just nudge Maria into shooting some of her data my way now, and neither of us will break any NDAs? What’s _more_ important, however, is what SI’s brand new spies have been getting up to recently? You guys having agents is a little scary considering Happy’s head of security.”

“’Agents’ is a little bit of a stretch,” Pepper didn’t bother to hide her amusement. “We snapped up the science and R&D divisions, for the most part.” 

“And _Agent_ Hill, and you know she’d be saying the same thing if she had been able to make today.” Jane spoke around a mouthful of cheese. “You have agents.” 

“We have agent. Singular.” 

Jane shook her head. “I stand by my original plural. SI is technically now in private security, if you hadn’t already been classified as such by the whole Iron Man thing. You’ve got mercenaries. Didn’t Stark give that delusional ‘privatized national security’ spiel in front of Congress?” 

Pepper was used to those kinds of questions shoved into her face along with a microphone, or being asked by men in cheap suits with government-authorized metal IDs stuffed in the pockets. This kind of shrewd challenge shouldn’t come from a woman in tank top and jeans over horchata. 

It was Jane asking, though, and she was as mixed up in this whole thing as Pepper was; they had club membership cards to prove it. Pepper rubbed at her temple with one hand, a habitual attempt to stave off a stress headache that wasn’t likely to pounce when Jane was only trying to help. 

“We’re-” Pepper hesitated and lifted her hand from her forehead. Looking around, she couldn’t quite decide if she was making sure they weren’t being listened to or seeking the right word. The dining room was blissfully quiet, the other tables empty, and their previously-attendant server was no-where to be found. She finally settled on, “-not mercenaries. Maria’s in charge of her own division, and she doesn’t take contracts.”

“It’s not SHIELD anymore, though.” Jane said. 

“Maria’s division reports are proprietary information. I’m pretty sure me telling you anything would bring bloodhounds looking for any slip on my part to your door.” If Pepper’s slight smile was a little pursed, well, taking on Maria embroiled SI in intrigue purchased along with SHIELD’s personnel and assets. The whole thing was an organizational nightmare on top of the ongoing litigation. All this time since Maria had joined SI and new complications kept popping up despite her best efforts. “There’s still an official SHIELD.” 

Jane made a face. “Sort of, if you squint, but you have the unofficial version.” She resettled herself in her chair and leaned both elbows on the table. Hunching forward, she grinned up at Pepper and stage-whispered, “So- what’d you promise her for the good stuff?” 

“Well, you have to realize that most everything was publicized during SHIELD’s fall.” Pepper said, shifting gears and relaxing. “What wasn’t was encrypted or not included on any networked drive. So - Natasha’s dirty laundry? Aired. Maria’s shoebox full of flash drives? Not aired.” 

“Metaphorical shoebox, right?” Jane asked.

Pepper just smiled at her, lifted her eyebrows suggestively, and continued. “I promised her control. SI’s resources, but development locked to her division. No consumer-grade production without her oversight.” 

“I bet she loved that.” 

“My people almost rioted.” Pepper laughed at herself. “And I admit it gave me the chills to draw up the contracts. Legally, all former SHIELD intellectual property was not acquired along with the people, but anything inside of their heads that’s developed using SI resources belongs to us. We don’t have a ‘we own you’ clause in our employee contracts. We do, however, have boilerplate legalese to cover our ass and prevent our employees from generating income based on products built with our infrastructure. I basically granted her personal-project resources without most of the strings. SI is fully culpable for any accidents or incidents resulting from anything she builds, but our only access is if we go through her.” 

Jane’s eyes widened at the implications. “Holy shit.”

“All of the responsibility, none of the perks,” Pepper said. “I’m surprised my lawyers didn’t quit immediately, and Tony took half a day to accept the decision, but they came around. A lot of SHIELD’S Intellectual Property is hush-hush classified and despite a few bullets between them, the military still sees Maria as an ally. To a point, more discretion for her means more support for SI, but when you come right down to it—” Pepper lifted her horchata but didn’t drink. “I made things messier than they already were.” 

“You have a lot of faith in Maria.” 

Pepper was silent for a stretch, long enough that Jane finally finished off her meal and downed most of her drink. Stark Industries lawyers were protecting Maria Hill to the best of their ability, and Pepper had been the impetus behind her acquisition, but Fury’s influence lingered. She saw it in Natasha. In Maria. In Tony and Steve, though the effect was far different. In Maria, however, Pepper also felt a kindred spirit.

“She has a lot of faith in me,” Pepper said at last. “And I want to believe it’s not because SI is a means to an end.” 

Jane crossed her silverware on her plate and said, “She shows up to club meetings and gets drunk with us. That sounds like friends to me.” 

“Sometimes she reminds me of Sam and sometimes she reminds me much more of Natasha,” Pepper said. “I’d like to think so, though. I understand her, at the very least.” 

The waiter materialized next to their table and cut their conversation short with his queries about desert. Pepper and Jane looked at each other for confirmation and grinned up at him. 

“Fried ice cream for each of us?” Pepper asked. 

As the waiter headed off with their stack of dinner dishes - a very large stack for just the two of them - Jane watched them go. Pepper could see the question building, so she wasn’t surprised when Jane, trying to sound nonchalant, ventured, “So. Desert too.” 

“I was hoping you wouldn’t comment,” Pepper told her, tone tart, clipped and quelling. “It’s rude.” 

Jane turned a sympathetic look on her. Sympathetic and determined. Whatever pretense of casual commentary she’d begun with, it was gone now. “But you’re progressing?” She gestured vaguely somewhere between her shoulders and hips. “I’m not the right kind of doctor, but-” 

“I’m fine.”

“Pepper.” Jane pulled out her serious face. “We should be monitoring you. Just in case something happens.”

Pepper sighed and sat back from the table. Wherever their desert was, it wasn’t here yet, and when Jane had that determined glint in her eye Pepper could never change the subject. “I’ve got it under control.” At Jane’s skeptical eyebrow-raise, Pepper added, “I promise.”

“Have you told anyone beyond us?” Jane indicated the absent women with a wave of her hand. 

“If I tell you I told Bruce, had him dig out his doctor’s kit, would it make you feel better?” 

“You haven’t, though.” Jane’s frustration came through loud and clear, though she was keeping her voice low and her words more vague that they would have been if they were speaking in the Tower. She was being careful even though the place was deserted. “You’re ignoring this.” 

Offended, Pepper grew arch. “I am absolutely not ignoring anything.” Her diction became over-precise, sharp and clear as if she were explaining to someone hard of hearing or, perhaps, slow to understand. “I simply do not see this as a problem, and I am taking steps to ensure that it does not become one.” 

“I don’t doubt you have.” Jane wasn’t scared off by Pepper’s posturing, taking it for the fear it was. Instead, she dug in and locked her jaws around the topic. “If I were you, I’d start considering where those steps are taking you. And-” She finally hesitated. “-I think you should tell Tony.” 

Pepper inhaled, ready to give Jane a piece of her mind about butting into others’ business, and pulled herself up short. Jane knew her business because she’d been told, and Pepper had told her in first place because Jane had a habit of refusing to budge. With a heavy sigh and a sense of futility, Pepper put her elbows on the table, her face in her hands, and curled in on herself. “I know I’m doing the same thing to him as he did to me, and I promised I wouldn’t when I was injected. We promised each other, and I do feel awful about it. I’m just not sure I’m ready.” 

Reaching across the table, Jane patted her shoulder. “Avoidance isn’t usually one of your coping mechanisms.” 

“No,” Pepper laughed to herself a moment before lifting her head and giving Jane a small smile. “Control is. What makes you think I’m not trying to control the situation?” 

“Oh.” Jane sat back at the question and looked around at the other empty chairs. “You told us.” 

“I am well aware when I need support and, unlike someone otherwise known as Iron Man, I’m pretty sure that Natasha and Maria can keep a secret without obsessing over it.”

As intended, the comment made Jane laugh. She then blessedly dropped the subject just as their desserts arrived. The little bowls contained a fried ball that, when Pepper split it open with her spoon, released the scent of cold vanilla and cinnamon. 

The first spoonful sparked Pepper’s memory, and she held up a finger as she licked her spoon. “I forgot to show you.” She passed her phone over with her photo gallery open. “You’ll love this.” 

Jane’s mouth dropped open at the first picture of a shirtless Tony Stark wearing a baby sling as he studied one of his hologram displays. In the sling was Pepper’s dragon egg, the red opal striations catching the light and reflecting into the camera lens. Tony looked damned handsome if Pepper said so herself.

Jane looked from picture to Pepper and back. “Oh my god.” 

“There are more.” Pepper waved her spoon to indicate Jane should flip through a few. 

In addition to half-naked Tony, there was a picture of an adorably fuzzy-chested Bruce wearing both the sling and a patient squint as he listened to someone speak off-camera. Another picture showed Steve and his stunning array of muscles only partially obscured by the sling straps and the egg pressed against bare skin. There was picture after picture with the three boys at various times of day in various shirtless states. The one constant was the baby sling and its contents. Jane paused on a picture of Tony and Steve, laughing over bowls of ice cream, both naked to the waist as Tony cradled the egg. 

Pepper leaned across the table to watch both the screen and Jane’s face. At Jane’s baffled look of delight, she only grinned at her. “That’s what made me remember. I brought them a reward for all their hard work.” 

“Oh yes, _you_ brought _them_ a reward,” Jane said with a laugh. “This is amazing. What is going on?” 

“The egg.” Pepper tapped her phone screen with her spoon. “Technically, it’s mine. Tony picked it up at a flea market and was told it’s going to hatch a dragon. The only catch is that it needs contact with bare skin to incubate properly.“ 

“That is one gift horse you are banned from looking in the mouth,” Jane said. 

“My thoughts exactly. Since someone needs to run this circus, namely me, the boys have been taking turns.”

“I’m almost sorry that I’ve monopolized Thor since my plane landed. I don’t think he’s set foot into the Tower proper since last Sunday and I know he hasn’t been down to the lab. It’s almost like you’ve all been giving us privacy.” Unrepentant, Jane glanced up with a mischievous expression on her face. “He’d be right at home taking care of some sort of weird egg.” 

“And you’d have pictures to prove it.” 

“I would.” Jane glanced down at the phone. “These are adorable. You need to send me copies.” 

Pepper laughed at Jane’s earnest tone. “What are friends for?” 

Jane passed Pepper’s phone back and began to try and catch up with her melting dessert. In between spoonfuls of ice cream, she asked, “So - is it really an egg?” 

“Signs point to yes,” Pepper said. “It has life signs, and it’s warm to the touch. It might look like a rock, but it’s definitely not a rock.”

“That sounds fascinating. Origin?” Jane asked. 

“Extraterrestrial, and still under investigation,” was all Pepper said, Jane’s glued-at-the-lips status with Thor in mind. “But, pertaining to the egg, I did have a request to make.” 

“Something I can do to help besides egg-sit?” Jane asked. 

“Can you drop a line to Darcy? I’ll cover her expenses while we need her.” 

After a beat, Jane grinned at Pepper. “Darcy is going to love me.”


	9. Chapter 9

Thor spun Mjolnir to adjust his grip on the haft and braced a foot on the low wall that edged the roof beneath him. The small apartment across the street appeared empty, though in the small hours of the morning the occupant was most likely sleeping. Nothing stirred on the apartment block besides the team, and nothing had yet appeared that would warrant a full Avengers response. Wisely, the good Captain had called for the team to stay their approach while they waited for sign that the latest summons had not been a hoax. 

Despite the hour, a low, hot breeze swept the City and rustled the lower hem of his cape. The hum of electric fans from a dozen nearby windows provided accompaniment for the symphony of crickets that chirped as if at the behest of a manic conductor’s baton. A stray dog rattling abandoned glass in the alley below was the only other sign of life. It was passing odd to be called to the site of magic workings and have it be so still. He trusted it little. 

At Thor’s side stood Stark, Man of Iron, suited for battle and primed for flight, though his faceplate remained lifted. His expression was pensive in the perpetual twilight of the City, and lights from the inside of his suit lit the hollows of his cheeks. What cause there was for true concern Thor had still to identify, but as Stark listened to something he alone could hear, his jaw tightened as it only did when something was about to go awry.

“You are worried,” Thor said to Stark. “You mislike this quiet as much as I, then?” 

Stark shook his head and, as if the lethargy of the summer night had seeped through his suit, took a long moment before he replied. “I ran the apartment through the system on the way here and I think I might be responsible for this particular target.”

Thor watched Stark, expression mild. “A bold admittance.” 

“Yeah, but- hold up, the team needs to hear this.” Stark lowered his faceplate and spoke instead over the comms, his voice in Thor’s ear. Without preamble, he said, “Apartment belongs to one Iona Gordon, nineteen. Scottish-American, pre-med, pet snake. I know Cap said on the way over that the situation involves magic, but I can do him one better. Miss Gordon is possibly being targeted by someone called the Enchantress.” 

Over the comms, Thor heard the sound of Hawkeye’s quips, the Captain’s objections, and disgust from The Lady Widow. He heard them however, as distant things, focused as he was on the familiar name of Enchantress. Only one woman he knew combined that particular moniker with magic, and the Lady Darcy’s phrase ‘hella bad news’ was more than appropriate for any warning of her presence. More sharply than he might otherwise, he directed his words to his nearest companion. “The Captain said you were the one to make the call to assemble, Stark. Why not tell us this detail?” 

“I was waiting for confirmation that I’d put the pieces together correctly. I got a- a tip off. A phone call. Kinda vague.” 

“And you have confirmation now?” Thor found himself unamused, and it seemed he was in like company if the faint Russian curses over comm were any indication. 

“You could say that.” Stark paused briefly. “Miss Gordon goes by the name BrigidsDottir on a forum website called Brews of the Wyrd. In the interest of further data-” Stark paused once more, a clear hesitation. “-I might have leaked one of the spells from Oscar’s book to the forum.” 

The Captain’s voice was a whipcrack. “You _what?_ ” 

Thor closed his eyes and breathed deeply for strength. “You have released Asgardian lore onto your internet, and now the Enchantress is on the hunt for one of these would-be sorceresses?” 

“In my defense, I acquired some excellent data in the form of failure rates, and Miss Gordon did get the spell to work, which-” 

“I know of the Enchantress,” Thor interrupted him. The team needed background on their threat more immediately than they needed Stark’s rationalizations. Damage done, there would be time for recriminations after their protective duties had been discharged. “The Lady Amora, the Enchantress, is renowned in Asgard as a skilled and powerful Asgardian Sorceress. She is ruthless, cunning, and brooks no fools. Were I to pit myself and Mjolnir against her alone, the outcome would be by no means certain, and I fear the damage we might cause in this populous area. I must warn you, she is of fickle allegiance, though most oftentimes she has been my foe. If she is on Midgard and cleaves to such stealth, she is with some certainty no friend of ours.” 

“Great,” the good Captain said, “Any comparison in her powers to Loki’s ability for mayhem?” 

Thor delivered his own hella bad news: “Commensurate.”

“Even better.” The Captain continued, his words clipped and his tone that of a commander, “If she shows, we need her away from people - including Miss Gordon. Thor, Iron Man, draw this Enchantress up and out. Hawkeye, disable if possible. Widow, can you wake Miss Gordon and escort her somewhere else quietly? Preferably the quinjet. Hulk, I need you in a support role for this.”

Banner, having not yet taken his bestial form, spoke mildly and in agreement. “Hulk’ll be there when you need him. Just let me know when you think I’ll do more good than harm.” His silhouette - that of an average-sized man in a bathrobe - seated itself on the roof of an apartment just down the street. Beyond him, the angular form of the quinjet. 

“Perfect. Standby,” The Captain said. 

There was a brief silence upon the comms, followed by the creak of a door as the Lady Widow granted herself entrance to the young Miss Gordon’s apartment. As expected, her stealth drew no alarms. 

“Iron Man,” the Captain said into the absence of further updates, “Are you sure she’s going to be here? It’s been dead quiet for long enough to make me worry. What sort of ‘tip’ was this?” 

“Just the address and, er, reference to a conversation I’d had earlier this week. No direct mention of the Enchantress herself, but- she’s the one who has been interested in Oscar.” 

“Her presence impacts the safety of young Oscar Thompson? And you did not see fit to speak of this, Man of Iron?” Thor tried to tamp down on his temper, but found himself turning to face Stark in his suit. With Mjolnir, he gestured from Stark to the still-dark apartment and their ostensibly sleeping ward. His voice rose to a level that carried. “Upon what authority did you reserve this intelligence? What influence upon Earth has the Enchantress gained during the span in which we did not act?”

“Thor-” the Captain began. 

The Lady Widow interrupted all of them with a sharply whispered, “Fight later. Miss Gordon’s asleep, but I’m not the only night-owl in here tonight, boys.” 

The comms picked only the sudden intake of Hawkeye’s breath and Thor set aside his ire at Stark’s autocracy. In the tense silence, they listened to the faint rustle of fabric and the sound of footfalls too loud to be the Lady Widow’s. 

“Are you able to report?” the Captain asked.

Further silence greeted his words. A breathy snore rattled somewhere in the dark. 

The Captain readied them with a simple, “On my mark.” 

Once more: steps, this time across tile. The sound of cupboard doors opening and closing and the Lady Widow’s even breathing. The pop of a cork. Liquid against glass. 

Hawkeye was the first to see: “Movement.”

A flicker of light appeared in Miss Gordon’s apartment window. Swiftly, it grew to illuminate the features of a woman quite unlike the Lady Widow. Most notable was the source of her light; fire like emerald sparks struck from metal dripped from her palm as she held it aloft to survey the room. She was certainly not dressed as if she anticipated a fight. The inconstant light drew highlights of green from pale hair worn loose, and the vibrant green bodice she wore fitted over like-color skirts with a long train. She held a wineglass in her other hand and sipped idly of the contents as she leaned to inspect the objects with which Miss Gordon had decorated her bedroom windowsill. Beyond, just visible in glare, was an occupied bed: presumably Miss Gordon herself. 

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Hawkeye said. “You don’t jack a college kid’s alcohol supply. That’s real low.” 

The Lady Widow finally spoke, her words barely more than breath and amplified for them to hear, “She’s no stranger to Earth. She dug a corkscrew out of the junk drawer.”

“What’s she doing?” the Captain asked. 

“Looking,” the Lady Widow sounded exasperated. “Moving Miss Gordon’s altar from the window to somewhere else. Drinking merlot. I think I can get the drop on her.” 

The Captain said, “Hold.” 

Thor questioned the wisdom of the Captain’s command only briefly, for the Enchantress’s next act was to set down her wineglass and released her magic light to drift upward toward the ceiling. In one swift motion, she stepped to the bedside and bent. Her hand covered Miss Gordon’s mouth, smothering the young woman’s scream enough that they heard it only through the Lady Widow’s comm.

“Hold,” the Captain’s voice was hard. 

Thor itched to start forward, an impulse shared by Stark who had reined himself from leaping off the roof at the sound of the girl’s muffled cry. Though the sound of her struggle was muted by the static quality of their comms, Miss Gordon did not go easily with the Enchantress. The flail of limbs and bedclothes was visible even in the dim glow of the Enchantress’s light. A mortal youth was no match for Asgardian strength, however, and the Enchantress hefted Miss Gordon from her bed and turned toward the window. 

Mjolnir dropped through his grip until the strap tightened on his fingers with the hammer’s weight. The low whir as he spun Mjolnir in preparation was no louder than the sound of distant traffic.

Slowly, deliberately, the Captain began his countdown, “On my mark. Two, one-” 

The Enchantress raised her hand.

The very moment she blew the windows out of the apartment Captain said, “Mark.”

Thor could barely hear him over the sound of falling glass and debris. He was already airborne, pulled by the weight of Mjolnir, as the shockwave hit him. The deep, balance-rattling sound of it left a faint ringing in his ears. Dogs began to bark. Light sprang to life in the windows up and down the street, and no few were thrown open for the worried and curious to poke their heads out. Stark was at his side as he flew for the Enchantress and her prize, both readying their attacks for the moment Miss Gordon was clear. 

Miss Gordon’s captivity was short-lived, thanks to the Lady Widow. Seizing upon the element of surprise, she stung the Enchantress with her Widow’s Bite. 

The electrical charge crackled across the Enchantress’s skin from the small disk the Lady Widow called her ‘bite’, clinging to the strap of her dress at the shoulder. The Enchantress arched her back, hissing in surprise and pain. 

For a single moment of opportunity, she released the young woman from her arms. Miss Gordon dropped to her knees, equally stunned, the momentum of her struggles carrying her forward to crash against the windowsill. 

Asgardians were hardy, both fortunately and unfortunately, and even on a simple errand of kidnapping in Midgard, the Enchantress’s protections remained substantial. It was but a moment before the Enchatress plucked the Widow’s Bite from her dress and crushed it in her grip in a flash of green power. However, the distraction succeeded well enough. Even as the Enchantress spun to reclaim her hold, the Lady Window lifted Miss Gordon in a shoulder carry and spirited her into the dark of the apartment. 

Thor and Stark’s way was clear. Stark strafed the hole in the side of the apartment building, nipping at the Enchantress with repulsor blasts from his palms before he peeled away from his approach and up into the sky. The blue glow of his jets threw eerie light against the shattered wall. The crumbling brick and exposed rebar cast changing shadows upon the Enchantress’s face. 

Her expression twisted, livid, and the Enchantress swore a vile Svartalfheim oath. She shifted immediately to counterattack. Blue light from Stark’s repulsors gleamed across the blunt face of Mjolnir as Thor pressed his attack, however, and her counter became instead a gesture of defense. 

Their ambush’s advantage lasted only long enough to ensure Miss Gordon’s safety, a fact which did little to surprise him. The Enchantress was not a masterless stripling learning her incantations from a book, but a woman thousands of years old with the skill and experience to change the tide of far greater battlefields than this. 

Thor’s strike slammed against her energy shield in a shower of sparks. The shield’s translucent curve lit with the impact, a flash in the dark that made clear how far the shield extended. The light, in turn, illuminated Thor’s face as well as the Enchantress’s.

“Your presence, and that of your friends, is a surprise, my dear Thor.” Her words remained even despite her exertions. In the time it took for Thor to swing again, she had taken stock of her opponents and loosed a bolt of power into the sky to chase the streak of Stark’s repulsors. Her swift hand motions were practiced, controlled, and her shield was once more in place before Thor began his downswing. 

She grunted as the hammer struck and strain colored her voice as she said, “Avengers, was it? It reminds me of the sort of name playacting children would choose for themselves. Precious.”

Sparks died in the carpet underfoot. “Midgard is under my protection, Enchantress,” Thor said. “That includes the young woman you have come to spirit away.” Hammer once more raised to test her shield, he readied a third strike. 

The Enchantress gave ground. Graceful beyond mortal ability, she spun away. Her hands described a rapid spell and a mantle of illusion descended upon her to hide her from his view. She became merely another shadow, one with the darkness of the rubble-strewn bedroom. 

“Thunderer,” she said, her words couched in silken tone, issuing from all sides. “Pray set aside this enmity, for there is little reason for it. If you would but kiss me once we should have no further quarrel.”

Thor advanced, alert and on guard. He was no longer the crass youth willing to solve the problem of magic with indiscriminate swings of a hammer. “I know well your wiles, Enchantress, and the hypnotic power of your kiss. Leave Midgard to its natives, or I shall bring my power to bear upon harrying your every step. You shall rue your opposition to the Avengers.” 

“A pity you do not find my offer tempting, my dear Thor,” the Enchantress said, and her words this time came from the edge of the great hole in the bedroom wall. Thor spun, too late to bring his hammer to bear. She stepped beyond the window into open air. The streetlights cast her into relief, her skirts a drape of emerald, her hair a fall of gold. “I do so admire your skill with a hammer, but if our joining is not to be, then it is not to be.” 

The Enchantress was beyond reach of his swing. Thor made no immediate move, but spoke quietly into his comm, “Man of Iron?” 

“I see her,” came the response. 

The harsh light of repulsor fire followed hard upon the heels of the transmission, but the Enchantress proved ready for him. With speed born of magic, she flew rapidly into the sky and beyond the splash of energy as the repulsor blasts struck the building in her wake. 

Thor leapt from the window and was airborne before the glow had died. “Which way,” Thor demanded. 

Stark sounded puzzled. “East, at roof level. Might want to get ready to step up to the plate, Brucie, because she’s coming right at you.”

“She’s heading for us,” The Lady Widow said. “Quinjet’s not too far, but we’re behind on our timetable.” 

The Captain, visible upon the street below, asked the begged question. “Why?” 

The Lady Widow’s response mixed exasperation and amusement. “Miss Gordon insisted that we rescue her snake.” 

“I like her already,” Hawkeye said. His continued words were clipped and professional, however, his brief levity absent. “I’ve got eyes, but, man, is she coming in fast.” 

Thor and Stark chased after the Enchantress, brief seconds behind. 

Between shouts to the citizenry that had sprung from their homes at the sound of battle, gladiatorial spectators with little concept of the consequence of too immediate a view, the Captain asked, “Can I get a report on the likelihood of bystander casualties? Debris?” 

“She’s on a mission, Cap,” Stark replied. “Right now, there’s not much chance of collateral damage unless we try and keep her from that girl.” 

“And if we do?” The good Captain’s words remained even, his question as good as an order.

“At least a block’s worth of perimeter around the quinjet’s position.” 

The Captain said only, “Copy that. Stop her.”

Little of the plan to lure the Enchantress away from the Midgardian homes remained intact, for mayhem proved not her goal this night. Though he and Stark were fast upon her heels, the Enchantress reached the Lady Widow and the young Miss Gordon first, brief steps from the relative safety of the open quinjet’s rear hold. 

The scuffle was brief, for the Lady Widow knew only what trickery the Midardians had gleaned from their prior encounters with Asgardians and the Enchantress had centuries upon centuries of experience in combat with those of a myriad of expertises. Light reflected from Lady Widow’s blade and Thor landed hard on the rooftop a moment before the Enchantress cast a spell that threw the Widow back as if she were hit with a ram. The blade described its own arc and clattered to the rooftop far out of reach.

The Lady Widow landed on her feet and launched herself forward without pause, but the Enchantress had an arm around Miss Gordon’s neck. Her other palm she raised and pointed at the side of the young woman’s head. 

Miss Gordon’s eyes were wide in her dark face, one hand lifted to pull at the Enchantress’s arm, the other cupped over her shoulder in protection of a small, partially-seen snake. She winced away from the palm pressed to her curls, but refrained from struggle. 

Thor halted his advance, unwilling to threaten Miss Gordon. So too did the Lady Widow draw to a wary stop, and Stark above hovered at the ready. 

Her hostage a shield more effective than any spell, the Enchantress laughed and surveyed the three of them. “Though I know not how you heard of my coming, I cannot but be flattered by such devoted attention.” 

Beyond her, a shadow moved at the quinjet’s side, growing in size with every passing moment.

“Were I you—” Thor cut her off before her next taunt and gestured to the lee of the quinjet. “—I would not waste my breath.” 

Where once Banner had spilled from the cockpit in stealth now stood the towering form of the Hulk. 

Even the Enchantress was not immune to the Hulk’s formidable presence. There was once more strain in her voice as she said, “Perhaps not.” 

The gravel upon the rooftop rattled as the Hulk roared and leapt forward. 

The Enchantress loosened her grip on the young woman, her arm dropping from neck to shoulders that she might shift her stance, and turned her threat of magic against the charging Hulk. The lapse in focus was opening enough for Stark to swoop in from above as Thor closed in from the other side. There was flicker of black and red as the Lady Widow circled, prowling for an opening. 

Beset upon all sides, the Enchantress spun, agile despite her hampering skirts and her hold upon Miss Gordon. The spell upon her lips sounded to Thor’s ear as one like to conjure swords enough and wraiths to wield them that young Miss Gordon’s safety would no longer be assured in the melee to come.

The whistle of an arrow from a far rooftop pierced the night. The Enchantress wrenched around, her shoulder struck, and dropped her hostage at her feet. Miss Gordon cried out and curled into a protective ball.

The Enchantress, with a snarl of wordless rage and power, threw back her head and loosed a burst of raw magic. Like a cresting wave that traveled at a pace too swift to doge, light rippled outward from her chest.

Thor was forced to turn away lest he be blinded, and the touch of power as it flowed through him, even beneath his armor, was as an assault by boiling oil. He swallowed the pain as the wave rolled over him. His skin sizzled. He tightened his grip on Mjolnir lest his vulnerability lose him its aid. 

From all sides, he heard the distress of his companions. The quiet hiss of the Lady Widow, the foul language of Stark, and the furious roar of the Hulk. 

The power of the spell faded, pain flowing away as the wave passed. Though he felt flayed, raw magic stripping him raw in turn, he turned once more to the Enchantress and hefted Mjolnir. 

Bright spots fouled Thor’s night-vision, but the Enchantress’s new tactic was clear enough. Between him and his foe lay the shimmering curve of another spectral shield. This one lay as a dome over the Enchantress and her prize, and already she wrested the arrow from her flesh as the light of one of her healing spells limned the wound. Whatever cry she loosed at the pain was muted to silence by the shielding dome, though it prompted Miss Gordon to uncurl and sit up, her eyes wide now more in wonder than in fear.

“Nice shot, Hawkeye,” came the Captain’s praise as he gained the roof from the fire escape. Beyond him, the spell-wave’s bright power faded the further from its source grew.

“We must not tarry.” Thor kept his words close. He trusted his comm to carry his warning to each of the others far better than he trusted the glittering shield before him to keep it from unfriendly ears. “Lady Amora is adept at traveling spells. Give her not the time to cast one or we should lose them both despite our efforts.” 

The Hulk’s fists came down on the top of the dome in an explosion of sparks that rained down as they advanced to encircle their quarry. Still, the barrier remained. An arrow glanced from the shield to skitter across the roof without effect. Thor stepped forward to test the might of Mjolnir against the Enchantress’s skill. Before he could do more than find his footing, however, the Captain called them away. 

“Something’s up, gang,” the Captain said, a familiar suggestion to the rest of them to likewise observe the shifting field. 

Though the advantage remained in the Enchantresses favor, once her healing spell left but a fading scar upon her shoulder, she refrained from renewing the attack. Instead, she knelt at the awe-struck young Miss Gordon’s side. The words they shared remained within the shielded dome but once their exchange closed, the Enchantress grimaced. She shooed the girl away from her and toward the edge of the dome, far enough out of her reach to no longer be of use as a hostage. 

“Change of plan,” the Captain said. “I’ve got Miss Gordon. The rest of you see if you can’t pin Lady Amora down.” 

Lest the task given to the rest of them be easy, the Enchantress raised her hands and her lips moved once more. The dome began to dissolve, melting away as if by gravity now that she no longer held tight to the spell. 

“She casts something of far greater strength,” Thor called and moved to attack the very moment the dome grew too weak to force him back. Her current spell did not sound to be a lengthy one. 

The good Captain matched Thor’s progress but for differing purpose. Against the chance the Enchantress might change her mind about the young Miss Gordon, the Captain swept her into his arms and settled the round bulk of his shield between her and whatever dire workings were about to be loosed. 

The sorcery the Enchantress held between her palms was nothing Thor had yet encountered, a spell of unknown provenance and effect. He would not wager upon it having benign nature, however, especially as it did not appear directed at any single one of them. Spells less concerned with aim were hard to predict and often broadly lethal. 

In the hopes of disrupting her concentration, Thor struck out with Mjolnir. The Enchantress’s spell caught hold before the great hammer could connect. 

Time grew uneven. As if in the throes of a dream, Thor’s body fought against an encompassing, invisible force. All his strength counted for naught as he strove to land his final strike, Mjolnir moving in increments. The air felt as if it had thickened, become cloying and viscous, and he was hampered by the fluid. 

Despite this, the Enchantress seemed to move all the faster, her hands once more describing a spell at far too fast a rate for him to determine the likely effect. 

The next moment, Thor’s balance deserted him. He stumbled forward after Mjolnir as it completed its arc through empty space. The blur of golden hair and slender fingers that had been the Enchantress now stood within the open hold of the quinjet, her skirts a waterfall of fabric down the lowered gangplank. Around her glowed the results of a successful traveling spell - one too long to have been the spell which Thor had attempted to interrupt, or to have been cast in the instant after he had attacked. 

“You meddle with time, Enchantress?” Thor shouted as he recovered his feet. Around him, his companions likewise regained their composure. “A dangerous proposition, even for you!” 

Nearby, above and too close, came the flare of repulsors. Stark hovered just beyond the glow of the spell as it grew to encompass the Enchantress.

The Enchantress’s physical form grew faded as the light around her brightened. Three arrows in swift succession flew out of the night, piercing her lingering image. Each passed through her to strike the interior curve of the quinjet’s hull. 

Three secondary spheres of light expanded from the point at which the Enchantress was hit to make the light she stood within all the brighter, and the static crackle of power grew in the air.

“’Ware, Avengers,” Thor held up a hand as the Enchantress laughed. The others paused at his warning more than at the sight of the spell. The Lady Widow faded into the shadows at the base of the quinjet, awaiting a time to strike. The Hulk halted his reach for the Enchantress, curling his fingers into a fist as if he might punch through her given the opportunity. Thor held Mjolnir ready to throw as he assessed the swirling colors and sparks. “The Lady’s spell will defend its own completion.” 

“Yes, _‘ware_ ,” the Enchantress agreed, amusement rich in her words though she continued to fade to elsewhere. “But may you also rejoice, dear Thor. You have succeeded in convincing me I do not need this girlchild. Is that not what you wanted?” 

“You shall leave Midgard, Enchantress.” Thor strode toward the quinjet despite the danger. “No child of this realm shall fall into your clutches.” 

“Clutches, Thor, really?” the Enchantress mocked him.

“There is no better term for your ungentle tutelage.” 

The Enchantress tsked lightly. “Your opinion matters little, as does this girlchild and the others of her ilk scattered about this realm. My time tonight has thus been wasted on a false trail laid by your Man of Iron.” Her extremities began to disappear in their entirety, and small lightning-like strikes of discharging power lit up the inner hull of the quinjet. Still, her words issued forth at volume from her translucent throat. “If you are to truly _‘ware_ any of my actions, then mind that I have already marked my protégé as my own. I am coming for the Midgardian youth Oscar Thompson, and if tonight’s showing is any indication, the wiser course would be to step aside.” 

“Lady Amora-” 

“I don’t think so,” Stark interrupted, his mechanized voice loud as he blasted forward. The whistling report of repulsor fire preceded him, though the beams struck not the Enchantress but the seats behind her and melted holes in the quinjet’s upholstery. The spell’s light grew ever brighter.

Over the comms, the Captain protested, “Wait—Tony!” 

The Captain’s words did little to stop Stark’s headlong rush toward the cloud of light and magic that was the tail end of the Enchantress’s spell. Her physical form was no longer aboard the quinjet, only her lingering laughter at Stark’s last, futile attempt to prevent her going. 

Thor leapt for Stark. His fingers closed around the suit’s ankle just as the suit’s metal fingertips touched the aura of the Enchantress’s power. Much as true lightning, power jolted through the metal skin of the Man of Iron suit and Thor’s muscles seized. 

Unable to arrest his fall and equally as unable to release Stark, Thor carried both of them hard into the metal planking of the quinjet’s deck. His weight, at least, pulled Stark from contact with the aura, and after their impact Thor attempted to roll them both to the wall before any great damage to either of them could be done. 

Despite Thor’s efforts, the spell lashed out one final time before it vanished entirely. Stark yowled in pain. 

The spell was then gone in full, as was the light and the woman who had produced both. The roof remained illuminated only by the moon and the small lights on the back of the quinjet itself. Everyday city noises once more filled the quiet. Somewhere beyond, sirens of one of the Midgardian’s emergency vehicles became once more the loudest sound in the night. 

Thor pushed himself up to a sitting position and leaned back against the bulkhead. The air smelled sharp and charged as it did after he called lightning from the sky. The Enchantress in Midgard was not an idle threat. Both he and she fought as if they were armies unto themselves, and this realm had already suffered under one such conflict.

Stark sat at Thor’s side clutching his wrist. Where the metal of his gauntlet had once been were bare fingers streaked with char. He was lucky to have not lost the limb entirely. His faceplate lay open, his brow furrowed. 

The others gathered in close to the back of the quinjet but slowly, properly wary of the remnants of the Enchantress’s power. The Lady Widow and the Captain with his young protectee hung back as the great Hulk approached first. Wrapping one great hand around the upper edge of the quinjet’s open hold, the Hulk thrust his head into the space the Enchantress had occupied. His nostrils flared as he scented the air. 

There was little left to fear, however. The Hulk grunted to signal that all was clear and disappeared around the far side of the quinjet. The Lady Widow followed, blanket in hand. 

The Captain set a wobbly Miss Gordon on her feet and cast a critical eye over the others, looking for wounds. All but Stark appeared hale enough at first glance. Even Miss Gordon, who upon closer inspection proved to have a small black and white striped snake clinging loosely about her throat, seemed little worse for her ordeal. What of her dark skin not covered by her nightshirt bore a few reddened scrapes, but she remained on her feet and stared about the quinjet in wonder equal to that which she’d shown for the Enchantress’s power. 

Stark, a look of concentration writ across his expression, nudged Thor with his elbow and said, “You know, Amora’s style really is like the kid’s, but if I didn’t know she was Asgardian, I wouldn’t have-- Explosions and zaps and dramatic glowing disappearances like that don’t really seem like Loki’s style. At any age.” 

“They are not,” Thor replied, refusing to follow where Stark’s non-question led. He clambered to his feet even as the Captain crouched in front of Stark to examine his hand. The Hulk had yet to return Banner to them, but the quinjet’s medical supplies already rested at Stark’s side. Thor had not seen them be deposited. “My brother’s skill lends itself to ruse and trickery. Of the pair of us, I am more apt to employ physical might.” 

“Sure, right, when all you have is a hammer--” Stark quipped, absently extracting his hand from the Captain’s grip. 

“Hold still, Tony,” the Captain told him. 

Stark winced as the Captain began to wrap Stark’s injured limb in immobilizing bandages. Whatever ailed his hand, however, it did little to deter him from his bothersome line of inquiry. Stark continued, “But you said you have experience with this sort of whiz-bang stuff from someone who was learning. Did you mean Lok--”

“That is none of your concern,” Thor cut him off, unwilling to share childhood regrets. He stepped down the gangplank and off onto the roof, gaining sorely-needed distance between him and the current object of his ire. “What is of your concern, and ours, is the Enchantress’s presence upon Midgard. You knew of this? And you said nothing?” 

“I said something,” Stark protested. “Just not to you.” 

“Iron Man, Thor.” The Captain’s use of titles drew them all up short. “Can this wait five minutes, please. We have a guest.” 

All regard turned toward Miss Gordon still standing barefoot in the quinjet’s hold. 

Miss Gordon waved and said, with the faint brogue not native to the City, “If you are to be discussing a thing I needn’t be hearing, I can plug my ears and hum a bit.” 

The cheek of her words eased the Captain’s serious mien, and he closed his eyes and loosed a brief chuckle. A scant breath later, he rose from Stark’s side. He wore a smile on his face more genuine that his prior reprimand might have suggested, and scooped a blanket from the nearest seat to offer her. “That won’t be necessary, miss. At least not at the moment. Will you come back to the Avengers Tower with us when we head out tonight?” 

“Seeing as there’s a great bloody hole in my bedroom wall, I’d be a fair idiot to refuse,” Miss Gordon said, wrapping the offered blanket about her shoulders. 

“Perfect,” the Captain said. “We look forward to your company. For the moment, though—Hawkeye!” 

The crown of Hawkeye’s fair head became visible over the roof’s edge moments after the Captain’s call, followed swiftly by the rest of his person as he leapt up from the top of the fire escape. Under their regard, he picked his way across the singed gravel of the roof and pulled to a halt at the base of the quinjet’s gangplank. He tilted his head at the young Miss Gordon and, which curious concern, slid a glance at the Captain. “You rang, Cap?”

“Can you take Miss Gordon back to her apartment so she can pack a bag and gather—” the Captain gestured at the reptile slung about the young woman’s neck. “—snake supplies?” 

Hawkeye’s concern did not lessen, though he did slump somewhat. “But I just—”

“You’ve been volunteered. Black Widow’s with the Hulk still,” the Captain said. “And the rest of us are occupied.” 

“Oh,” Hawkeye said. A sharp glance each took in Thor on the roof beside him and the truculent frown upon Stark’s face. “ _Oh._ Yeah, no problem. I got this.” He rambled up the gangplank and offered Miss Gordon a sloppy salute. “Hawkeye, at your service.” 

The blush upon the young Miss Gordon’s cheeks was a welcome honesty. Holding tight to the blanket around her, she offered a wide answering grin and a brief return salute. 

The Captain delayed their departure with a raised hand, however. “Before you go, Miss Gordon, may I know what the Lady Amora said to you?” 

“Captain…” the grin slid from the young Miss Gordon’s face. She averted her eyes and her demeanor grew hunched. “She, ah, just wanted to know how good of a witch I was.” 

Miss Gordon paused to gauge her audience, and when none of them reacted to her words beyond the Captain’s encouraging nod, she continued, “I told her about my dabbles, she got all angry-like. She only really wanted to know of one spell in particular, a candle-lighting spell, and leastaways when she found that it was the only of its kind I knew, she wanted nothing to do with me.” 

Stark’s silent grimace at her words was confirmation of responsibility, and Thor grit his teeth lest he frighten the young Midgardian woman with the argument that yet brewed between he and the Man of Iron. 

“Lucky you, kid,” Hawkeye said, a gentle hand upon her elbow to lead her off of the quinjet. He spared no glance for either Stark or Thor, and the lack was as telling as a shout. Instead, he began to ply Miss Gordon with questions. “So, ‘Miss Gordon’, you have a first name?” he asked, though he knew well the answer already. 

The sound of Hawkeye and Miss Gordon’s steady dialog marked their descent of the fire escape, the young Miss Gordon’s answers growing easier with each friendly query. Hawkeye had only just turned the topic toward her snake—“I named him Dara,” Miss Gordon said, “after my da’s...”—when at last their words faded with distance.

The Captain was the first to speak, his words suspending all other argument. “Tony.” His regard returned once more to the seated Stark. “Thor is the first person to throw himself headlong into a fight. If he’s holding back because of a spell, he knows something. What on earth were you thinking?” 

Stark, unrepentant, gestured with his bandaged hand toward the empty center of the quinjet’s hold. “She was basically taunting us about coming after Oscar, and I don’t know about you, but I hate waiting on someone else’s timetable. I thought the suit would—” 

“Protect you?” the Captain interrupted. “This isn’t a fight we’re going to have, not when you’re our casualty for the night. It was a stupid move.” 

“It was a logical one, even if it might have been a little dangerous. Last time I checked, interrupting a spell before it finished meant it all fell apart.” 

Thor could no longer stand idly by. “Magic is not to be trifled with,” he said before the Captain could continue their oft-tread argument. “The Lady Amora’s spell had passed the point at which it could be interrupted.” 

“Great!” Stark lifted his hands as if to beseech the heavens. “That would have been really good to know, you know, before I almost fried myself. Apparently I’m playing with the wrong edition of the player’s handbook. Help me out here, because this is exactly why I need to know everything I possibly can about magic.”

“Do not blame ignorance for this wanton display of recklessness. Though I differ often with the good Captain’s on the topic of your bravery, in this matter we are in accord. It is your same disregard for the power of magic that placed the young Miss Gordon in danger.” Thor paced at the bottom of the gangplank, his grip on Mjolnir tight with frustration. “Your obsession with magic has clouded your judgment and you no longer offer such power the respect a wiser man need show. We are here because you have given these children a tool beyond their understanding, exposed them to threats too great for novices.” 

“Obviously, your Asgardian magic isn’t beyond their understanding, since a good bunch of them got the damned spell to work.” Stark half-pushed himself up from the quinjet’s deck only to be met by the Captain’s restraining hands. “Don’t try to tell me Asgardians are universally superior here.” 

Thor halted in his pacing to soothe his temper. His cheeks felt over-warm, as if burnt by standing too long beneath a bare sun. Flexing his fingers, too, proved similarly uncomfortable, as did the chafe of formerly well-fitted armor against his skin. “It was luck only that the Enchantress changed her mind in pursuing the other children.” 

“It wasn’t luck.” Stark’s face was as red as Thor’s felt. “There was no reason for her to go after them in the first place, because they don’t know anything.” 

“Then why did she? And how did you know she was going to?” Thor demanded.

Only then did Stark’s attention waver from their argument. His gaze traveled toward where the Hulk had vanished beyond the hull as he sought help unforthcoming. His mutter of, “Dammit, Natasha,” proved precursor to his true reply. “His name is Nigel Erikson, and he’s some flavor of Nine Realms Alien, though he doesn’t seem to be Asgardian.” 

Thor rounded upon Stark and stalked up the gangplank until he towered over Stark’s seated figure. “Why did you not tell me if you knew I was likely to know of him? I could have spoken with him.” 

“You ‘speaking’ with him would scare him right the hell off.” Stark did not back down, seated though he was. 

“That was not your judgment to make. This delay for unnecessary secrecy may have given the Enchantress an edge we can ill afford her to have.” 

The Captain forced his way between them, a hand upon Mjolnir as if Thor might find himself inclined to raise it against his companion. “Everyone—and I mean everyone—will swap intel once we get back to the tower.” He then waited until even the returning Lady Widow and be-robed Banner nodded their acquiescence. 

Thor found himself last to agree, offended as he was at the Captain’s assumption that his temper would get the better of him. His nod, however, eased the lines in the Captain’s expression. 

The others began to prepare for their leave-taking. Even the Captain moved away, the no-longer-needed medical supplies in hand. The radio at the front of the quinjet spat static and requests for status from the Midgardian authorities.

Stark and Thor regarded one another for a long moment.

“I feel like I’m running into battle wearing a blindfold,” Stark complained.

Tamping down on his irritation, Thor offered a hand to assist Stark to his feet. “You meddle with that which you do not understand. Magic is unforgiving of error.” 

“I meddle because I want to understand,” Stark replied. “That’s kind of how I roll.” He grasped Thor’s hand with his unbandaged one and levered himself and the suit upright. Once standing, he tested his balance and, upon finding it satisfactory, shook free of Thor’s steadying hold. They parted, uneasy allies, and spoke no more.

Beyond the roof’s edge, Hawkeye’s distinctive laughter floated up from the fire escape. He and the young Miss Gordon clambered onto the roof soon after, her with a small duffel and he carrying an unwieldy glass box filled with small rocks and bits of foliage. The Lady Widow was at Hawkeye’s side in a moment, her hands upon the container he carried. With her help, Miss Gordon’s things were safely loaded aboard and the quinjet prepared to lift off. 

Thor settled into his jumpseat next to Banner, his thoughts heavy with the revelation of another Asgardian’s schemes putting the good people of Midgard at risk. The young Oscar Thompson’s newfound power was not the result of an isolated incident of a mislaid spellbook, and as yet there was little way to determine how many more youths the Enchantress had influenced. Though her taunts indicated no other protégés than Thompson, the Enchantress was wily. There was much to think on and a great deal of discussion to be had.

The Lady Widow’s touch light upon the controls, the quinjet rose from the rooftop, and Banner reached to pat Thor reassuringly on the shoulder.


	10. Chapter 10

Pepper flopped her head back against the curve of the giant beanbag and let her book slip from her fingers. The lab was quiet, empty, and her little reading corner was the only one lit. Tony had shoved the mini-fridge close by, any entertainment she wanted just a shout to JARVIS away, and as much as Tony was a menace with merchandising and needed to be stopped, the fuzzy Iron Man blanket wrapped around her shoulders was appropriately snuggly. By all rights she should be more than comfortable. 

And she had been comfortable the past three nights while the others had been off trying to chase down the Enchantress after the disaster at Iona’s place. This, however, was the fourth night she’d dragged herself away from SI after everyone else had gone home only to curl up in the lab alone, shirtless, with the eerily warm stone egg harnessed to her front. The team had higher priorities right now than a weird egg she was, with some finagling, capable of watching (and resting her bare feet on under her desk, when necessary). Despite her assistants’ politely not mentioning anything out of the ordinary and her schedule cleared of meetings without offending anyone she couldn’t afford to, the whole ordeal threw Pepper off-balance. Like the bot clanking about somewhere in the dark, her thoughts ran in circles. 

Darcy’s plane wasn’t due in until late and, her book forgotten, Pepper watched the egg’s shell temperature graph on the nearby display. The graph fluctuated, a gentle, low-amplitude sine wave that matched her breathing, falling on the exhale, rising on the in. Pepper stared at it absently, her thoughts wandering from egg, to Tony, to the others out and about trying to hunt down the Enchantress before she could do any more damage to New York (or anywhere else, for that matter), and back to the egg. 

The more responsive the egg grew and the closer it was to hatching, the greater Pepper’s trepidation. Tony’s warnings of megafauna and massive komodo dragons left her cautious in her excitement. Exhausted, too. Egg-sitting all night while her superheroes were off trying to safeguard the earth from an alien plot was hell on her daytime concentration. She was supposed to be running SI, supposed to be making sure that her ever-growing realm ran like clockwork, but this was her egg. She knew every irregularity in the opal banding, every small dimple in the otherwise smooth ovoid, and--sleep-deprivation or not--she was damn well going to be there when it hatched. Pepper couldn’t deny the thrill of having something quintessentially alien coming crawling out of this hunk of extraterrestrial stone. 

A swell of unreasoning excitement burbled in her chest as she stroked the egg’s smooth dome, followed swiftly by the first stirrings of an attack like she’s been getting since she had first been injected. Like the aura of a migraine, Pepper could feel the heat creeping up on her, first as a tickle at the back of her throat, then as prickling static along her limbs. Despite all of Maria and her ex-SHIELD experts’ admonitions against Pepper letting her emotions take over, she hadn’t quite hit on the knack of it, and it seemed that both anticipation and apprehension were as effective triggers as anxiety. 

Pepper fixed her eyes upon the temperature graph where the line continued to dip and rise in time with her increasingly ragged breathing. The first time an attack had hit her while she’d been watching the egg, its temperature had hovered confusedly somewhere just above human. Now, the temperature rose and kept rising, a sharply climbing line that mirrored the egg heating against her skin to the point where she wouldn’t be surprised to lift it away from her stomach and find burns. 

If, that was, she could still burn.

“It’ll pass,” she said aloud, her words part of the mantra she used to will herself calm. She’d worked through this before, oftentimes literally. More than once she’d thrown herself into budgets and schedules and reports until her eyes glazed and her skin cooled and she could safely venture home without giving herself away. That Maria’s part of SI was research-locked away from Tony didn’t hurt, either. The egg was a tiny furnace resting against her belly. “It’ll pass.”

Tonight, though, calm proved elusive. The stack of files she’d brought home from SI sat on the nearest worktable untouched. Even if the opening paragraph of a prospectus could magically bore her back to 98.6 degrees, her skin itched like it was far too tight. She didn’t need JARVIS to scan her to tell her what was different about this evening’s attack. She could see the faint glow she cast on her surroundings well enough.

There was little to do but ride it out, and at least it didn’t hurt. Tucking her feet up and wrapping her arms around the egg, Pepper snuggled back into her beanbag nest. “Jarvis?” 

“Mistress Potts?” came the prompt reply. 

“Can you average those readings out to normal body temperature before Tony gets back?” 

“When you asked if I might turn off the temperature alarm, I have been taking the liberty of adjusting the values before they are placed in Master Stark’s analytical dataset.” 

There was something deeply reassuring about JARVIS’s lack of judgment, even if she was wildly abusing her administration access to the AI. 

Pepper rested her chin on the egg. “I’m not hurting it, am I?” 

“As far as my readings can determine, there is no difference between incubation at average human body temperature and Extremis-influenced body temperature. I suspect that due to the egg’s alien provenance, that incubation dependent upon ‘skin’ contact produces a wide range of acceptable temperatures.” 

JARVIS’s prompt response did not entirely set Pepper at ease, but neither her blanket nor her bra had caught fire, the beanbag hadn’t lived up to its fire-hazard reputation, and the egg had only grown more attuned with her movements the longer she spent with it. The fact that it now ‘breathed’ with her would probably be tomorrow’s scientific conundrum. For the last several days, whenever Tony and Bruce weren’t out searching for clues as to the Enchantress’s next move or keeping watch over Oscar and Iona at the tower, they’d been texting her updates from the lab about the marvels of the data she’d produced for them, and that had been data JARVIS had already scrubbed for wacky temperatures. 

Pepper ran her fingers across the multi-hued striations that decorated the egg’s shell. “Thank you, Jarvis,” she said, dismissal enough that the AI would know that her next words weren’t for him. 

They weren’t for anyone that wasn’t the egg pressed against her skin, really, and with the speed at which the egg’s behavior was changing, this might be her last chance to say them before it hatched. Placing a hand very deliberately on the very top of the egg, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry for putting you through this.” 

The only response to her words was the thrum of Tony’s servers and the thunk of a bot running into something. Thanks to the reddish light Pepper now cast, she could see the dim outline of DUM-E with his favorite fire extinguisher attachment roaming between patches of chalk and wax Tony had yet to scrape from the lab floor. He made his way very slowly toward her and the pile of candle-stubs just within her reach, checking each and every candle in case he might have missed a lit one.

Mentally batting away a twinge of self-consciousness, Pepper continued, “I know Jarvis says you can handle the temperature fluctuations, that Tony says you’re designed around them otherwise you wouldn’t change temperatures so damn fast, and I know you sort of have a sense of how warm you want to be, but- it still feels like something I need to apologize for. I hardly know what my own body is doing and here I am dragging you along, hoping you’ll be alright.

“And I know I’ve been kind of quiet, that I’m supposed to talk to you, but— everything I’ve wanted to say has felt far too personal to go on a tape someone else is going to scrutinize.” Pepper lifted a hand and admired the faint light radiating from beneath her skin. She tracked her glowing hand through the air as she waved it in a vague circle, a gesture that left a faint red afterimage. “But right now I’m a one-woman rave. I’ll have to ask Jarvis to get rid of this video anyway, so I think now’s the right time. I love Tony, I really do, and furthering the cause of science is laudable and all, but there are some things are things I only want you to hear.”

With a faint, self-mocking laugh, she added, “If you can hear at all.” 

The whir of DUM-E’s servos grew louder as he investigated another, closer patch of wax and chalk.

“But I guess I don’t really need disclaimers.” Taking a centering breath, Pepper shifted to lay her cheek against the shell. It radiated her own heat back at her. “I just feel like I’m trying to confess. This shouldn’t be this hard.” 

Pepper took another breath and closed her eyes. “If I have one hope, it’s that you are really a dragon. The four legged, two winged, fire-breathing kind, and not just because I grew up wanting to be a goldrider, though I did. I spent I spent from ages twelve to seventeen wishing I could be Lessa, that I’d be whisked away from my boring life and told that it was my task to lead…” She paused to review what she’d just said and let out a tiny huff of laughter. “I might not be a junior accountant any longer, but I didn’t get a dragon as a teenager and there’s always been that hope.

“But that’s not why I think you should pop out of this egg with scales or some other way to withstand fire. It’s because right now I’m fucking terrified.” 

Her last three words seemed to echo in the empty lab and Pepper lifted her head to make sure she was still alone. Barring DUM-E and JARVIS and an inert U on his charging station, she still was, though that didn’t make her next words any easier. 

“I still have Extremis,” Pepper said, “And god does it feel weird to say out loud, but it rewrote my damn DNA, so even if Tony thinks it’s gone forever, it was never going to be something I just shook off no matter who came up with the procedure to get rid of it. If this whole gift thing means you’re really my dragon, then you need to be a really dragon-shaped dragon, for both our sakes. Just—”

Pepper cut herself off and uncurled from her little beanbag-and-Iron-Man-blanket nest enough to grab one of the closest candles stubs. The heat of her fingers left indents in the softening wax. Before it could melt too badly, she pinched her fingers around the charred wick and concentrated. 

She needed practice. There was no use ignoring something she couldn’t change. 

The light beneath her skin pooled at her fingertips and the wick began to smolder. The moment the flame caught and licked at her skin, she released it and held the now-lit candle out over her egg. 

“Whether or not you breathe fire, I do,” she told the egg. The candlelight flickered in a draft and cast long, sharp-edge shadows across the half-finished projects that scattered the lab. “Among other skills.” 

The egg rocked in its harness, as if some great weight had shifted within the stone shell. Pepper almost dropped the candle. 

Recovering, she froze, listening. Waiting. The egg remained still. 

“Jarvis,” Pepper began. “Did you—” 

Pepper snapped her mouth shut as fire suppression powder hit her square in the chest. Holding her breath, she waited until the noise stopped before blinking up at the bot holding the extinguisher attachment’s hose pointed at her face. “Oh my god, Dummy.” Powder flaked from her skin as she shifted. She was still glowing, but the candle in her hand was very definitively no longer lit. 

JARVIS sounded pained. “DUM-E was instructed not to let open flame within ten feet of the beanbag, Mistress Potts. I do apologize.”

“Right,” Pepper spat chemical over the side of the beanbag. “Dummy’s increasingly specific extinguisher instructions strike again. Got it.” 

DUM-E’s arm drooped at her tone. 

“It’s fine, Dummy. I’m just-- no more candles by the beanbag. That’s probably a good rule. You did fine,” Pepper reassured him. She tried not to move her torso too much as she clambered up out of her powder-covered nest. She was getting chemical beneath the straps of the egg’s harness. She patted DUM-E on the arm and used him for balance. “You have to help me clean up, though. Jarvis, lights?” 

Pepper’s glow subsided over the next hour as she and DUM-E managed to get most of the powder off of both Pepper and her stuff. The itch beneath her skin faded, as did the faint fear of speaking the word ‘Extremis’ out loud. By the time she’d gotten the lab back to its previous level of clean, she both she and the egg and returned to normal human skin temperature and the temperature graph had returned to a lazy sinusoidal wave linked with her breathing. Beyond the egg’s initial wiggle, however, it didn’t twitch again.

Standing with her hands on her hips, she regarded her now-powder-free egg-sitting nook. “Jarvis? Remind me to give Darcy the list of Dummy’s fire rules. There are only so many times per day anyone should have to clean up after him.” 

“Of course, Mistress Potts. Shall I corrupt the relevant footage?”

“Please,” Pepper said with a sigh, stroking her thumb along one of the egg’s red opal bands. “And thank you, Jarvis. I promise you that I won’t keep using you to help me lie by omission for much longer. I just— I just want to sort myself out before I blindside Tony.” 

Rather than the sympathetic response she expected, JARVIS announced, “Miss Lewis has arrived. I have taken the liberty of directing her elevator to the lab floor.” 

Pepper closed her eyes briefly, shooed away the worst of her Extremis fears, and said, “Send her in when she gets here.” 

With the height of Avengers tower, Pepper had enough time to do another sweep for chemical powder—which was mostly cleaned up—and a double-check of Tony’s attempt at Darcy-proofing. Anything truly delicate had been moved somewhere with a lock, and a couple of projects Tony had busted all to hell were sitting out as decoys. Unless Darcy decided to try out lockpicking with Clint or Natasha, the lab was about as safe as it was going to get. 

Darcy arrived at the lab door while Pepper was shoving in chairs that could be tripped over if Darcy decided to aim for the bathroom in the dark. It was the loud thump, thump of Darcy’s heel against the door frame that got her attention, a moment before JARVIS announced, “Miss Lewis, Mistress Potts.” 

Straightening, Pepper welcomed Darcy with a smile that swiftly turned to concern at the five or six very heavy looking plastic grocery bags that weighed Darcy down. 

“Did someone offer to take your bags?” Pepper asked, beckoning her forward even as she stepped up to help carry something. “I know you’re a poor college kid, but please tell me you brought a suitcase.” 

“Oh yeah, like three. Happy dragged them off to wherever my rooms are, but these— these are supplies.” 

Darcy paused only briefly to take in the chaos of the lab with a satisfied nod before she headed for the nearest worktable and swept the jumbled remains of one of Tony’s decoy projects to the side with a clatter. The plastic bags landed on the table with a loud series of clanks and rattles, and she immediately began to pull things out and arrange them. “PB&J, a few beers to share, like eight different kinds of granola bar. Jane said I could use the Avenger’s credit card and you’ll be glad to know I didn’t buy a puppy or anything crazy.” 

“I’m very grateful,” Pepper said, amused as she came to a stop at Darcy’s side. “There’s a mini-fridge across the room, but you didn’t have to bring anything. We do stock the kitchen, you know.” 

“Yes,” Darcy said as she pulled another sack toward her and started to unload it, naming off each of the items as she dragged into the light. “But do you stock pocky—” 

“Thor,” Pepper said. 

“—Or vanilla hazelnut rooibos—”

“Bruce.”

“—Or a deli package of dolma—”

“Natasha.” 

“—Or cotton candy flavored icing—”

“Steve, I blame his metabolism.”

“—Or this? This is probably the best of the lot, because Maria told me to bring it for you.” Darcy finished her list and turned, holding out what looked like a massive jar of marshmallow fluff, easily bigger than her head. 

Pepper opened her mouth, closed it, and stared. 

Still holding the jar outstretched, Darcy raised her eyebrows suggestively and said, “This’ll probably give you a pretty epic sugar high, and maybe I did go overboard with the black AmEx, but can you blame me? It’s not every day I get handed access to the Avenger’s funds and told to go wild.”

“Maria—?” Pepper asked, glancing at the ceiling. “Jarvis? Can you garble any incriminating audio?” 

“Yes, Mistress Potts,” replied JARVIS. 

The moment he finished speaking, Pepper plucked the jar from Darcy’s hands and spun the lid open. Instead of edible fluff, the inside was painted white the fluff proved to be a soft-looking cotton intended as packing material for what looked like a the grip of a sword, minus the sword. She shook the jar to get a better idea. The grip was slick and black and the indentations in the handle for her fingers had shiny inset squares of metallic gold. The cross-guard had the utilitarian look of a product in the design phase, but if you stripped the guard away and squinted a little, the thing looked nothing so much as—

“Maria made me a lightsaber?” Pepper asked, unwilling to remove it from the jar. One too many errors on lab surveillance and she’d have some explaining to do. “What am I going to do with a lightsaber?” 

Darcy turned back to her rather impressive array of random foodstuffs and finished emptying the last bag as she talked. “Technically, and I quote, this is a safety valve. Something something thermionics something something exothermic blah blah blah. Bottom line is that you can heat-dump whenever you’re feeling itchy and, bonus, you get a beatstick made of plasma. Maria said that the heat has to go somewhere if you’re not naturally dissipating it, so might as well make it useful, and considering where you live…” 

“I—” Pepper cut herself off, unsure quite what the flutter in her stomach was telling her this time. Part of her reason for walling SI off from Maria’s pet project department full of former-SHIELD R&D was selfish. She didn’t want to be ‘fixed’ again; she wanted concrete research that would help her cope. 

This, however, wasn’t just coping. This was implied action. “I’m not an Avenger.” 

“Did I say you were?” Darcy asked, nonchalant. She popped the lid off of one of the beers and hopped up on the table to sit. Legs swinging, she said, “If Juggling Club wants me to play courier, I will gladly do spy shit and be paid in snack foods and shirtless hotties, present company included, but whatever secret message Maria is sending you, don’t look at me.” 

Pepper replaced the lid on the jar and set it down on the table between a jar of cookie butter and some fruit leather. Almost absently, she adjusted her bra strap and the egg harness, and let one hand rest on the egg’s stone shell. “When did you see Maria?”

“Didn’t,” Darcy said. “Maria made up for missing the lunch by meeting Jane for coffee and Jane picked me up at the airport and we went shopping immediately after for fake-out munchies. Then we called Happy from the hotel because a bunch of new data came in for Jane that can’t stay away from for even five minutes and Thor’s mad at Tony so he wasn’t going to come find her here.” She shrugged. “Jane’s not in town very often, and apparently convoluted plans to sneak rad superhero toys around the boys is a more fun excuse for a meeting than ‘hey, you’re never in town, let’s catch up.’ I don’t judge.” 

“There’s logic behind it. Somewhere,” Pepper said, though her thoughts were elsewhere. “Mostly that Maria giving me anything other than paperwork or a headache would push Tony into getting in touch with his inner bloodhound. If we didn’t drag you in, Natasha could have probably just left it under my pillow, but any scent of tech changing hands and my ulterior motives wouldn’t stay ulterior for long.” 

“I think Nat and Maria enjoy spy games way too much.” Darcy tipped her head back and took a long pull on her beer. Wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, she added, “Not that I don’t, but, like, in moderation.” 

Pepper nodded and shifted to lean against the worktable next to where Darcy sat. Her decision not to tell Tony about the return of Extremis still made her uneasy with the necessary lies of omission, but while Tony had helped her with the nightmares, held her through the panic attacks, had been there with reassurances that he’d gone dark places too, she didn’t want him to hold her hand through figuring how far she could push herself. She wanted to decide for herself when to leap into his world and on what terms. She deserved that much. 

As useful as the ‘safety valve’ Maria had sent her might be, it was a little too close to defining the terms for Pepper’s liking. 

The clink of the bottle against the worktable surface was Pepper’s only warning before Darcy wrapped her arms around Pepper’s shoulders and gave her a tight hug. Startled, it took Pepper a moment or two to curl her fingers around Darcy’s arms and give her a return squeeze. 

“You looked like you needed one,” Darcy said as she disentangled herself from Pepper and the harness. “Also, on the menu: a distraction safe for prying ears. I have news.” 

Pepper laughed at that, boosting herself up on the worktable next to Darcy. “News of-?” 

“Investigations into the magic lady who went all Loki on that apartment cross-town a few days ago. I’ve got the scoop.” 

“Your plane landed two hours ago.” 

Darcy lifted her chin and passed Pepper a beer before reclaiming her own. “I am well-connected.” 

“Jane filled you in.” 

“Jane filled me in,” Darcy agreed amiably. She prodded her stack of designer granola bars and pulled out the pocky instead. Offering Pepper one, she prompted, “Since Stark and the others aren’t due back to report for a while, you want me to-?” 

Pepper, still amused, twisted the cap off her own beer, took a stick of pocky, and gestured for Darcy to continue. 

“Apparently Thor’s got contacts on Earth now. Fans? Worshippers? But they’ve got their ears to the ground for all mentions of Asgardians, so he dropped them a line and fished up something good. The mystery bookseller at the swap meet that book was not the only one in the US of A to follow a pattern of offering teens suspicious magic books. One or two of Thor’s fan club actually ended up with the things, and they’re pretty similar to the first one. Jane says that Thor and the others have been rounding up the books all day. Nobody can tell if this means that this Oscar kid is the end goal to whatever plan she’s got cooking, or if there are backup kids, or…” Darcy shrugged.

“Any more like Oscar?” Pepper asked. 

“Nope. All ‘minor talents’ so far, according to Thor. Some were promising, but he’s not super inclined to leave any Asgardian books with ‘em.”

Pepper let out her breath. “I really don’t blame him.” 

“Someone said Tony had a copy?” Darcy asked. When Pepper glanced over at her, she wore a deliberately guileless expression that made the question all the less innocent.

Opening her mouth to say ‘no’, Pepper paused and reconsidered. “Knock yourself out. It’s in a box labeled ‘sprockets’ on one of the tables somewhere in the middle there.” She indicated the general direction with her beer. “Start with the candle spell and have Jarvis give you a rundown of Dummy’s fire safety rules.” 

“Did he actually appropriate a sprocket box, or was he trying to throw me off the trail?” Darcy craned her neck to see if she could spot it from afar.

“I don’t think those are mutually exclusive.” 

Darcy offered Pepper a grin. “He underestimates me.”

“Maybe,” Pepper said. She took a long pull of her beer and wrinkled her nose. “But you did shove… whatever this thing was out of the way so you could set up your snack table.” She flicked a finger toward the sorry wreckage of the decoy project scattered among the beer and foodstuffs.

“This?” Darcy waved a hand dismissively. “Stark doesn’t leave out anything he’s worried I’ll break anymore. Besides, this didn’t look like it did anything. If it did, all the power cords would go places and there would have been mad scientist tools mixed in.” 

Pepper rubbed her hand over her face and laughed. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

“I know these things.” Darcy patted Pepper’s shoulder.

Finishing her beer, Pepper stared at the empty bottle for a long moment as exhaustion washed over her. It had been a long night in a series of long nights. The Extremis-accompanied panic attack and cleaning up after DUM-E had been the cherry on top, and she was so tired she was starting to lose track of her own metaphors. Losing the battle against a yawn, she glanced over at Darcy to find the young woman with a sympathetic twist to her smile. 

“Go to bed,” Darcy instructed. “I got this whole egg thing.” 

Pepper started to speak, planning to explain everything from the skin-contact incubation to the temperature monitor by the beanbag and how the candles still scattered around the lab were a temptation she needed to be careful of, but she only got as far as, “It needs to touch your skin—” 

“Eyes-in-the-Sky can fill me in,” Darcy interrupted, already stripping down to a sparkly purple bra. She tossed her t-shirt aside and held out her hands. “But I got the basics. Shirt off, egg in the harness. I got a B+ on my fake baby thing in high school, and I didn’t even set it on fire. Seriously, this is not a problem.” 

“You won’t need to worry about fire as long as Dummy’s rattling around,” Pepper said. With a certain amount of relief, she unbuckled the harness and passed the egg over. It was the work of a moment to get the straps resized for Darcy’s frame, and Pepper was left without the now-familiar weight. 

Darcy set to transferring her snacks that needed to be cold to the mini-fridge and waved Pepper away. “Why are you still here? I’m supposed to be the graveyard shift and you’re the one who looks like the walking dead, and I say that out of love, here.”

Pepper made a face. “Thanks for that.” However, she did start to gather herself. It took her a good minute to figure out where she’d moved her blouse after DUM-E’s over-enthusiastic firefighting. By the time she was done, Darcy had found the sprocket box and the small package of chalk and was already eyeing the figures for the candle spell. Pepper peered over her should and asked, amused, “Are you trying to rush me out so you can play with magic?” 

“Don’t forget your fluff,” Darcy told her cheerfully. She then called out, “Hey, Mr. Jarvis? Can you give me the rundown on Pepper’s pride and joy here?” 

JARVIS responded, his smooth words issuing from all sides. “Shall I start instead with lab’s fire safety rules, Miss Lewis? Perhaps you might wish to avoid an unfortunate incident in the event your attempts at Asgardian magic succeed.”

Darcy made a show of considering before gesturing imperiously with her chalk. “Make it so, Number One.” 

With Darcy well-situated and deliberately ignoring her so she’d take the hint, Pepper laughed and went to scoop up the files she’d brought to the lab on the off chance she’d work on them. It was late, she was tired, and if Tony and the others weren’t back tonight already, they wouldn’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest. She perched the jar of ‘marshmallow fluff’ on top of her stack of files as she headed toward the door and—as tired as she was—began to consider her terms.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! I apologize for the posting gap. I have no excuse. 
> 
> ... I actually have a great many excuses, which include almost burning out my brilliant beta (oops), getting sick, going to a wedding, going to a funeral, and getting a new job. But the point is: have a chapter! Sorry it took so long! :D 
> 
> The rest will go up when I can finish final notes. Also, fair warning, chapter 14 will be slow as I need to redraft the final fight.

Thor stood at the back of the Quinjet, awaiting the opening of the hold. Through the window at the fore there was nothing but the blue of the ocean and the dark speckling of land upon the horizon. There was silence among the Avengers, one made of the exhaustion that comes with the lull between battles, and the thrum of the Quinjet’s engines was a thick vibration beneath his boots. 

The pale light of dawn grew brighter as they flew to meet the sun rising. Their long sleepless night was to end early on a technicality, though their waking hours yet stretched on before them. 

He carried Mjolnir at his belt, and in his hands he held the last of the books that their past days’ fruitless hunt for the Enchantress had uncovered. The book’s bindings were of cleverly-worked leather, embossed with a scene of a sorceress casting her spells into the sky like a celebratory display of explosives such as the Midgardians were fond of. Would that the pages inside were filled with only inert spells awaiting study. 

A nameless cluster of rocks, barely fit to be called an island, grew nearer. 

At the fore of the quinjet, the Captain leaned on the back of the co-pilot seat, and it was a measure of the team’s collective exhaustion that Barton did not comment on the good Captain’s proximity.

“In about two minutes, we’re dropping Thor off to take care of the damned book,” the Captain said. “After that, the rest of us are heading back to the tower. We all sack out, and that’s an order. Thor’s already said he’ll take care of his own downtime.”

Thor listened, though he did not partake in this last-moment briefing. The book in his hands trembled. It was well he had been at hand to close it when the trap had first triggered. 

“I don’t think I could sleep if I wanted to,” Stark said. “I’ll give the kiddos supervised lab time if the rest of you want to catch some z’s.” 

The Captain considered Stark. Though they were all similarly without sleep, he still said, “Done. We need pair of eyes on Ms. Gordon and Mr. Thompson.”

“I will wait to deal with this book until I hear of your return to the tower,” Thor said. The others turned their heads in his direction, all but the Lady Widow at the helm. “While these books were yet scattered through your realm, she might have hopes of finding easier prey. The Lady Amora will know that her final trap has failed and will have no further reason to wait to gather young Oscar Thompson. Soon after the book is gone, she is likely to strike.” 

“How soon after?” the Captain asked. 

Thor hesitated. “I know not. With luck, this book will contain some clue as to how to find her, once it is relieved of whatever mischief she has laid upon the pages. The tower may be safe enough while the Lady Amora thinks her plans well in motion, but I would not leave Oscar Thompson without guard after it is done.” 

The Lady Widow banked the quinjet as if to emphasize Thor’s warning, and when she had leveled them out she said, “By the time we get back to New York, the swap meet’ll be open again, and my intel should have arrived. I’ll let you know if I find Nigel Erikson.”

“So we’ve all got jobs to do,” the Captain added. “Catch as much sleep as you can. This isn’t over, team.” 

The others lapsed once more into silence and Thor returned his gaze to the forward window. The rocky outcropping was no longer visible, their heading changed. The rear door of the quinjet clinked and hissed as it began to open. 

Though he had not seen him move, the Captain appeared at Thor’s side with a quiet question. “You remember the egg that Tony mentioned at the meeting?” 

“I recall,” Thor agreed. “A so-called dragon’s egg. I also recall an interruption before much was said, and several dreary hours of justifying our actions to Midgardian authorities afterward. You have fears?” 

“You don’t?” the Captain asked. 

Thor frowned and considered the book he held tightly grasped in his hands. “Any number of novelty creatures, harmless enough, are traded under the name of ‘dragon’, Captain Rogers, and it is only chance that Nigel Erikson’s presence was even discovered. Had his wares been of any great concern, I believe we would have encountered him under more dire circumstances, just as we discovered the Enchantress. My curiosity in the matter aside, I fear that we have more pressing worries.” 

The Captain studied Thor a long moment before nodding his acceptance of Thor’s judgement. “Good luck with that thing.” The rush of wind past the now-open quinjet hold stole most of his words. 

“I shall await your signal,” Thor told him, clapping him on the shoulder. He pulled Mjolnir from his belt and, without a backward glance, leapt from the quinjet. 

By the time Thor landed upon the outcropping, the quinjet was a speck in the far distance and the sun had finally risen free of the horizon. The crash of surf was calming, and with the lack of other tasks, Thor set Mjolnir upon the book’s cover lest it fall open, propped himself against a stone, and dozed in the shade until he heard the Captain’s voice in his ear. 

Thor acknowledged their arrival at the Tower and stood once more. The book’s trap had been arrested half-sprung, and it was a trivial matter to trigger the final effect. He threw the book to the ground and nudged it open with a toe. 

Immediately, two great clawed limbs reached from within the book, dragging the creature they were attached to out of the page and into the light. It pulled its own bulk from the page inch by inch, and before it was even half done, its long neck and wedged head towered a great distance above. The massive creature looped its great sinuous body about the rocks until they creaked beneath the strain, its mottled green scales scraping the stone, but it was not until the beast pulled itself fully from the book reveal no further limbs did Thor know its proper name. 

“A lindworm,” Thor said, flourishing Mjolnir. A smile slipped onto his face and the thrill of battle filled his chest. A lindworm was a foe he’d felled many a time, though the battles often proved long and destructive. It was good they were at sea. There would be no interruptions. 

The lindworm struck. Thor laughed as he struck back.


	12. Chapter 12

Tony squinted at the chalk circle with its stubby red candle, stuck his tongue out in case it might aid his concentration, and willed the damn thing to light. For good measure, he lifted his hands (including the slightly singed one) and wiggled his fingers. 

When the candle didn’t light, not even a little, he grimaced and glanced toward where his young teacher had her hand clapped over her mouth. Iona Gordon was doing her best not to laugh at him, but it was a losing battle. She had the helpless, mortified look of someone fairly certain they shouldn’t be laughing, but they were now committed and the only reasonable course of action was to wait for his reaction so she’d know whether or not to just die on the spot.

Tony snorted in amusement waved a hand to reassure her. She doubled over with laughter and he took that as a good sign he needed to stop trying so hard for a little while.

They sat cross-legged across from one another, the lab floor between them covered in a dozen varying-sized circles, candles, and rocks that weren’t really doing anything to get him into the right frame of mind. The large egg strapped to his middle didn’t help with that either, unfortunately, and he itched pretty much everywhere thanks to the ridiculous full-body sunburn that their last battle with the Enchantress had given him. His magic-singed fingers ached from the close call that lost him his gauntlet, his head was fuzzy from lack of decent sleep, and he was more than willing to blame external factors for his failure of magical ability rather than acknowledge he might have finally hit on the one problem he wasn’t going to solve by throwing himself at it until it gave. 

At a nearby table, Oscar Thompson sat among loose-paper copies of all the books on magic that the team had found over the last few days thanks to the Enchantress. He had his feet up on the table in front of him, a pencil behind one ear, and he stared at the clipboard on his knees as if he was memorizing the newest spellbook one page at a time. Bits of scrap paper covered in what looked like random pencil marks were scattered across the surrounding tables. The kid reminded Tony of himself, back when he hadn’t yet invented his holographic interfaces and still had to kill a few trees to work through a particularly tricky proof.

Oscar’s look of intense concentration eased slightly when he noticed Tony watching him. “You know,” he offered. “Magic doesn’t like it when you’re worried it won’t work. This spell works.”

“For people who aren’t me,” Tony said, leaning to brace himself on his hands and ease the crick in his back from sitting hunched over the egg. “There’s like a 70% failure rate for them, too, and - as if the odds weren’t against me enough - I’m fairly certain this is an oil and water situation here.” 

“You don’t know that for sure,” Iona said, breathless, finally coming out of her giggle-fit. 

Technically, Tony was babysitting two teens and an egg while the others regrouped or guarded the entrances. In reality, only the egg really needed ‘sitting’ and Tony’s volunteering for first shift guard duty had more to do with getting willing test subjects into his lab who’d let him record controlled magic. Of all the places in the tower, he was fairly sure the lab was the safest, there was a Hulk and a Hawkeye on guard duty, and the team hadn’t heard a peep out of the Enchantress for days. 

Oscar had already bailed on him to try and figure out what the Enchantress might have meant by ‘marked as hers’, and Tony counted himself lucky that Iona hadn’t gotten tired of trying to teach him the candle spell. The data he’d gotten from ludicrously high-fidelity recordings of her and Oscar’s successful spell-casting would keep him busy for a sleepless week or two once this was all over. If he were smart, he’d declare that good enough for now and not lean so hard on Iona’s patience, but he had that gut feeling he always got when he was onto something. He was so very tantalizingly close to being able to _do magic_. There was no way in hell he was giving up just yet. 

Right now, however, a little break sounded like a brilliant idea. It had been a long night of awkwardly dozing in a quinjet jumpseat. “You checked out the mini-fridge yet today?” he asked the teens. “Scrappy-doo brought in a ridiculous quantity of munchables last night, everything from fruit leather to individually packed nutella-and-cracker snackers. I think I had probably eight of them for breakfast. No regrets.”

Iona, a quiet smile on her face, accepted the not-so-subtle suggestion and pushed herself up from the floor. “Did you want me to bring you something?” 

“I have coffee somewhere that I’ll get up and find at some point,” Tony told her. “For now I’m just going to sit here and pretend that I’m kicking magic’s ass like a proper genius.” As she moved away, Tony raised his eyebrows at Oscar, who was still staring in his direction. “Yes?” 

Oscar startled and refocused on Tony’s face. “Sorry, man, miles away.” His gaze shifted back to the clipboard almost immediately and his frown returned. “She said, ‘I have already marked’, right? Which could mean it’s a sticky spell, rather than a spell residual…” Sliding the pencil from behind his ear, he scribbled his thoughts down on the page he’d been contemplating. In the span of a moment, he was fully absorbed, and Tony was pretty sure he could snap his fingers in front of Oscar’s face and the kid wouldn’t bother to notice. 

The chirrup of a text message from the far end of the room was followed, a moment later, by Iona’s quiet laughter. She made her way back to Tony trying to carry a can of soda and half a dozen other snacks, and as she settled herself back on the floor across the chalk circle she asked, “So remember how I promised I’d let you know when Andrés contacted me again?” 

Tony’s interest piqued. “You got a text?” 

“I got a text,” Iona confirmed. “He says, ‘madre de dios, another dimension’ and he sent me picture of a very exciting blue portal-looking thing.” She turned the phone so Tony could see it. 

“Holy-” Tony said, scrambling to get up off the floor and not disturb the egg too much. Natasha had called in not even an hour ago to say that Nigel Erikson and his rock shop had disappeared entirely. Maybe they still had an opportunity to find out what the man knew. About to press his earpiece and broadcast on the team comm, he paused mid-gesture and asked, “Where is he? Did he say?” 

Iona, indignant, said, “Of course not. You’d try and stop him.” Her phone chirruped twice more and after a moment she read off, “He says, ‘There is a sweet geo site near Bossman’s hometown. Back for school in the fall. Mama said sounded like a good internship opportunity and would look good on resume.’ His other text says, ‘Bossman is an alien.’”

Boggling at her, Tony stopped trying to assemble the Avengers. “I feel like you are very blasé about the fact your friend is being kidnapped by aliens. Can you-” He was at a loss, his hands metaphorically tied by a nineteen year old witch with a smartphone. “We really need to talk to Nigel Erikson again, and stat.” 

“First off, I hardly call it being kidnapped, and, well-” Iona considered briefly. “I’ll tell him you won’t interrupt his adventure.” 

“Yes, absolutely, you do that,” Tony promised only slightly sarcastically. “We wouldn’t dream of interrupting his adventure.”

Iona wrinkled her nose at him and sent her reply. After an anxious thirty seconds of waiting, the loudest sounds in the lab those of Oscar’s pencil clicking against his clipboard and DUM-E’s aimless wandering as fire-safety inspector, another text came in. Iona held up her phone and did a dramatic reading, “Andrés says: ‘Tell Mr. Stark that he is probably the only person on the planet who could have gotten Bossman to bail on the swap meet. Thanks for nothing. I liked that job.’ Oh,” Her dark cheeks grew flushed with embarrassment. “That was a little sharp. He’s usually much more diplomatic.” 

Leaning back against the nearest workbench, Tony put a hand on top of the egg to keep it from rocking in the harness and sighed. “Yeah, well. I bring that out in people. Tell him I’m sorry and have a nice trip, and, oh-” He snapped his fingers. “Ask if he has any advice for that damn candle spell.” 

With a shrug, Iona began to key in the response.

JARVIS spoke from above, “Shall I triangulate cell towers, Sir?” 

“No,” Tony waved Iona to keep typing when she looked up in alarm. “If the portal’s already open, they’ll be long gone by the time any of us get there. Our only chance was to have the kid stall.” 

From near the door, Natasha added, “Probably wise not to waste time on pursuit, just saying.” 

Tony blinked at Natasha. “How long have you been standing there?” 

“Long enough to know that you were part of the curse laid upon the swap meet.” 

“I’m not part of-” Tony cut himself off. He swore.

Natasha picked her way through the lab. She’d switched out her tactical outfit for a different, less lived-in-for-two-days tactical outfit, and her nose was peeling from the same spell burn that Tony was suffering from. She came to lean on the table next to Tony and hummed a bar or two of something melodic over the top of his muttered cursing. When he was done, she said, “My contacts came through regarding Nigel Erikson.” 

“Finally,” Tony said. “Verdict?” 

“Nigel Erikson is Njal the Stonemason, appropriately enough, from Vanaheim. So not, technically, Asgardian.” Natasha cast an eye over the lab’s disarray, from seated teens to the scattered wrappers that the rest of the team had left this morning when they’d gotten a glimpse at Darcy’s offerings. “He was… a bystander. My source considers him harmless. A really eccentric Vanir in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the mentality of a resident of a mob boss’s apartment block who knows talking to the police will only paint a target on his back.” 

“Damn. Capisce on that front. The egg?” Tony asked. 

Natasha hesitated. “Don’t know. There was mention of perhaps smuggling between realms, but my source had no idea. If he is a smuggler, he’s either very small-time or very good. From what I saw of his wares, and the details his assistant had, nothing suggests anything more sinister than extraterrestrial supply streams, but I really don’t have much experience with alien contraband. Educated guess on my part? If the rest are duds, he’d dump the egg he shouldn’t have had and hope it hatches into someone else’s problem before he’s hauled in for the theft. Beyond that…” She shrugged. 

“More than we had ten minutes ago,” Tony said. “Thank your source for me.” 

“Already done,” Natasha told him. 

Iona’s text alert broke into their conversation. This time, when Tony and Natasha’s attention focused on her, she read the contents to herself silently first. “Aw, he wants me to give his love to the other Wyrdos and tell them he’s bringing back souvenirs. He runs the Brews of the Wyrd forum with me,” she explained, glancing up. “And his advice for the candle spell is to remember that the circle is only training wheels.” 

“Which means?” Natasha asked when Tony only nodded thoughtfully.

“Oh, um, that concentrating too hard on the training wheels sometimes makes it easier to fall over, and that eventually you won’t need them.” Iona thought about the response she had just given and, after a moment, nodded. “Yes, I think that’s what he means, though I’m not quite at that point yet, at least not on purpose. I was too worried I’d set my apartment on fire again to practice much, and then I was here at the tower and I really don’t want to it on fire either, but the text implied that Mr. Stark would understand?”

Tony scrubbed a hand over his face and winced slightly as his achy hand met his itchy cheek. Resisting the urge to scratch more, he said, “Yeah. He made an impression when we met.” 

In the midst of the loose pages of the spellbooks, Oscar startled all of them with a loud, “ _Fuck_!” The relative silence that greeted him brought him back to his surroundings. He blinked at Tony and the others for a moment and ventured, “Eureka?” 

“What’d you figure out?” Natasha asked before Tony could. 

Oscar fumbled with his wits. “Um. I might have figured out what spell she laid on me.”

Tony and Natasha exchanged glances, and Tony said, “I take it you don’t have good news on that front.” 

“No.” Oscar threw down the pencil and clipboard and rubbed his eyes. “Combo GPS and, uh, a blurring spell that makes it hard for me to be recorded by machines. Like in general, like I could probably do pretty good robbing banks with it on me. Super strong, but one of those dead easy sort of spells. I could probably break it myself, and I’m kind of pissed that I didn’t catch it earlier.”

“GPS doesn’t sound good,” Tony said. 

“What would you need to break it?” Natasha said over him. 

Oscar answered Natasha, “She layered the blur over the GPS, and the GPS is a simple binding spell like, binding her to me. You break it by burning shit. Symbolically. Hair’s easiest, ‘cause it burns fast. We have some of her hair?” He didn’t sound particularly hopeful.

“By GPS, does that mean she knows exactly where you are?” Tony pressed when nobody seemed to be listening to him.

Frowning, Natasha held up a hand. “Do any of the rest of you hear an odd clicking noise?” 

Tony’s eyes went immediately to the pencil that Oscar had been clicking earlier. It, however, was lying innocently and inert on the worktable among all of the paper. Iona’s phone was put away, too, and she stood wide-eyed next to him and Natasha, her gaze fixed on the contents of the harness nestled against his belly.

“I think it’s the egg,” Natasha said. 

Now that he was looking for them, all of the small fissures that covered the egg’s stone shell became apparent, as did the faint rock of the egg in the harness. Tony covered the largest of the cracks with his hands as if that would stop it from hatching. “It’s not my egg, it’s Pepper’s egg, and she will murder me if she’s not here to watch it hatch. Jarvis, buddy, can tell her to scoot down in a hurry?”

“Of course, Sir,” JARVIS said, only to follow with, “Also, the team communication network appears to be down. I am no longer receiving from any earpiece, including both yours and Ms. Romanoff’s.” 

Tony looked to Natasha, who had her hand at her ear. She shook her head a moment later, confirming JARVIS’s assessment. 

“That’s not good,” Tony said. Whatever was inside the egg trying to get out continued to click at him, and the eggshell itself - stone though it was - began to make a crackling, stretching sort of noise. The beanbag that Pepper had curled up in the last few nights struck him as a fair enough spot for the actual hatching, and he headed in that direction. He tossed over his shoulder, “Find Cap, Natasha?” 

A thickening in the air and a faint aura of green light in his path forced him to stop before he’d gone three steps. In the span of a second, the light flared and vanished, leaving behind Lady Amora, the Enchantress, smack in the middle of his lab. 

Resplendent in green battle armor reminiscent of a Roman centurion, with leather skirting and plated bodice, the Enchantress carried herself far more like a warrior queen than when Tony had seen her kidnapping Iona. The image was only enhanced by the faceguard she wore whose temples flared upward like green metal birdwings. Her chin lifted in hauteur, she looked him and the egg over dismissively before glancing past him at Oscar. 

“I find it amusing that a fortress such as your ‘Avengers Tower’ should leave itself vulnerable to teleportation. Is this your most cherished sanctum that you should keep my protege here? It looks rather more like a craftsman’s workshop.” She sauntered forward and past him, pausing only to pat him mockingly on one peeling shoulder as she headed in Oscar’s direction. 

Speechless, shirtless, and holding a hatching dragon egg, Tony simply stared at her. 

“I have informed the rest of the team of our intruder, Sir,” JARVIS announced.

The Enchantress looked up when JARVIS’s spoke, her eyebrows climbing to disappear behind her faceguard. She then turned sharply back toward Tony and her gaze dropped to the egg in its harness.

The glimmer of one of Natasha’s many hidden knives caught Tony’s eye as it flew, and the Enchantress had no further opportunity to be distracted. Her careless attitude dropped, her hands came up surrounded by a nasty-looking glow, and her mouth moved in a silent incantation. There was just enough time for Tony to make a break for the beanbag before a brilliant flare of light filled his workshop, followed swiftly by one of Natasha’s rare grunts of pain. 

Another flash and Iona shrieked. 

Tony covered a gap in the eggshell with his hand, braced for the next spell, and hoped the others could reach lab quickly enough for it to matter.


	13. Chapter 13

The wisdom of Jane knew no bounds. Thor settled lightly on the balcony of their hotel room and counted himself lucky that he need not pass through the lobby in his current state. The sun was still high in the sky—though noontime had already come and gone—and in his full regalia he was somewhat of a spectacle. He could but imagine the Midgardian response to sooty bootprints and the drying splash of blood across his armor.

Her forehead furrowed, Jane did not look up from her work as he entered through the sliding glass door. She rapped her stylus against the edge of the tablet in a contemplative tattoo, signal enough that she knew he was there, but it was only after she had made one final notation and set both her tablet and a small metal box on the nightstand did she greet him.

Though her initial smile was brilliant, the look quickly shifted to alarm. “Thor?” Between one moment and the next, she abandoned her seat and was at his side.

“It is not my blood,” Thor reassured her, trapping the fingers of her hand in his own and kissing the knuckles. Already his mood improved, her concern a balm. A smile found its way to his face. “I am fine.” 

“You look pretty beat to hell, though.” Jane’s studied him with wide, searching eyes, her free hand alighting on his chestplate. “What happened?” 

“The Enchantress remains well-hidden, and the greater part of the paths to her discovery are guarded by spellwork.” Thor placed Mjolnir on the nearby desk. “Today I fought one of her beasts, its conjuration linked to a trap placed within the most likely book to lead to her. I took it elsewhere to deal with it alone, but though it proved no match for Mjolnir, the beast served well its purpose. I am no closer to the Enchantress’s whereabouts than I was prior, and the book itself was destroyed.” 

“Damn.” Jane wrinkled her nose in sympathy, already reaching to help with his armor. 

Staying her hands, Thor kissed Jane soundly, and somewhat more fiercely than an afternoon meeting might otherwise warrant, even considering he’d been absent for more than a day. 

When they broke apart, Jane blinked up at him, “What was that for?” 

“Need I a reason?” Thor teased her. He would argue he did not deserve the suspicious look she gave him, but she kissed him briefly once again and backed away. 

“If you won’t let me strip off your armor, that means you’re heading out again.” Curiosity and sympathy filled Jane’s words. “A new lead?”

Thor shook his head once, then twice, and grit his teeth against a surge of helpless vexation. “None likely to prove fruitful. The beast I defeated was of the last of the books seeded across this plane by the Enchantress, and Nigel Erikson’s shop at the swap meet has been dismantled. Worse still, the Lady Widow’s attempts to discern the man’s whereabouts have been met with frustration.”

“She doesn’t sound like the only one frustrated.” 

“No,” Thor admitted. He turned away and stepped once more toward the balcony. “She is not.” 

Jane joined him upon the balcony and rested her arms on the railing in silence. In the afternoon light, the view of the city was exquisite. The great Midgardian skyscrapers cast the shadows of twilight though it was yet early, and the scent of machine oils in the summer heat drifted up from the streets below. Somewhere beyond, repairs of the city were taking place, accompanied by the report of hammerfalls and shrill repeating beeps that echoed from the surrounding buildings.

The Avenger’s tower was visible a short flight away. Originally, his remove from what otherwise was his home upon Midgard was a matter of discretion with Jane in town. Now, however, it was a matter of sanity. The urge to confront Stark and settle their differences grew as their avenues of investigation dwindled. Their team could ill afford discord in the face of the Enchantress, who — much as Loki — thrived upon taking advantage of such divisions, but news of Nigel Erikson’s disappearance renewed his ire at Stark’s uncounseled decision to hide his discovery.

Placing his hands spaced wide on the balcony railing, Thor leaned on its support and loosed a gusty sigh. “I cannot help but wonder how much closer we might be the end of this chase were the situation clearer, sooner. If nothing else, I would have liked to speak with this Nigel Erikson, if only because he is of another realm. What was Stark’s expectation should I have met with him? That I would proceed to fight him? That the man would take flight upon seeing my face? It is nonsensical.” 

Jane shifter her weight to lean upon the railing herself. Her hair caught what little sun shone past the surrounding buildings and she made a show of looking him up and down, taking in well his armor and the lingering grime of battle. “I’m not sure,” she said at last. “You are pretty scary.” 

“And yet, Stark frightened Nigel Erikson away well enough on his own. We shall never be truly sure how scary I might have been. Or might not have been.” 

“True,” Jane agreed. “But it sounds more like you’re mad that Tony didn’t think you were up for the task to do… something. Whatever that something is.” 

Thor grimaced, but her argument was a fair one and in any case, his pride needed no more prodding this day. He changed the subject with a shake of his head. “Be that as it may, there is also the matter that I blame myself for my own unavailability.” Reaching for her, he drew her into an embrace. “Though I would not trade my time with you, I feel a manner of responsibility for shirking my duties as an Avenger. Perhaps if I had been there—” 

“I am in New York maybe four times a year,” Jane interrupted. “Is that really an argument you want to have with yourself?” 

“No,” Thor said, leaning down to kiss her again. 

When Jane broke the kiss, she patted him on the cheek. The look in her eye spoke to her own determination to move from the topic of his frustration and to that end, she announced, “I’m really glad you’re not peeling anymore.” 

“I heal swiftly,” Thor said, willing to be distracted. “And Amora’s spell left but a superficial burn. It is Stark and Natasha that I fear have the worse of it. They returned to the tower sometime this morning, and—ah, Natasha said somewhat of Darcy?”

“She’s at the tower, you missed her entirely,” Jane said. When Thor opened his mouth, she continued, “And to answer your next question, no, I don’t want to move over there just yet, even with all the Enchantress stuff going on. Thanks to Pepper, Maria shot me some of the Selvig-SHIELD data she thought might be pertinent to my proof-of-concept prototype and it’s pretty heavily classified stuff. I’d rather not tempt Stark until I’ve got a handle on it. Now that I’ve said that, though, you’ve got that look on your face. Did we need to move our base of operations from the hotel?” 

“No, I was merely asking for your benefit. I have not needed to return to the tower but once since your arrival, and that only to share what information Stark had kept from the team. Since, I have made your happiness a priority.” Thor kept his expression as neutral as possible. “As you said, you visit seldom and briefly.” 

“Right.” Jane kept her tone controlled despite the rising color in her cheeks. She pulled away from Thor entirely and passed back through the balcony door into the hotel room. Over her shoulder, she said, “But that means you haven’t seen Pepper’s egg?” 

Thor followed her back into the hotel room, amused at her modesty as well as the topic chosen as her distraction. “You mentioned it was Darcy’s reason for being in the City.” 

“That means you haven’t seen it, though.” Jane found her tablet and met Thor at the edge of the bed. She bade him sit with her as she dropped onto the mattress and began a search of her small computer, prodding at icons with her stylus. “Pepper thought you’d get a kick out of it, since she said it was alien.” 

“Yes, gifted to Lady Pepper by Nigel Erikson. Stark mentioned it, but your government contacted us for an immediate accounting of the evening and the topic was set aside. Since, there have been other, more pressing matters to attend to, but—” Seating himself next to Jane, he peered over her shoulder at her tablet screen as she began to page through her email. “I shall be interested to discover what manner of beast hatches from such an egg. As I told the Captain, there are many things among my people that might be called dragon eggs, and any likely to be sold are harmless enough, if large. The truly dangerous ones find their way seldom between realms. Perhaps this ‘dragon’ shall become a mascot of sorts.” 

The pictures displayed upon Jane’s tablet proved to have the others of his team in various states of undress. Much to his amusement, even Banner was displayed lounging in Stark’s laboratory, a rare moment of playfulness for the man. It was well that his team had moments of merry. The bulk of them were far too solemn for their own good. 

Except—

Thor narrowed his eyes at the images. The shirtlessness appeared to be for the benefit of the harnessed contraption that held the egg in question. A picture of the egg itself came next and Thor bade her halt. “May I?” 

Jane passed the tablet over and Thor studied the picture of the egg. Parts of its shell caught the light and threw a red opalescence back at the camera. The rest of the shell was grays and blacks streaked through with white, and if Thor had not known it was intended to hatch, he might pass it by as a polished stone. Combined with the lack of garments on each of those holding the thing, his suspicions grew into dread. 

“Nigel Erikson gifted Pepper this egg?” Thor attempted to keep his voice even, though from the way Jane’s eyebrows rose, he had not succeeded at modulating his volume.

“As far as I know,” Jane said. 

Thor placed the tablet back in her hands. “Tell me, are the others bare to the waist because the egg requires the touch of skin to warm properly?” He did not need her to speak to know the answer, not with how her eyes widened. There was little time to delay; the final tending before such an egg hatched was short. That they had had no news of its hatching was akin to miraculous. He stood and began to leave the bedside only to be stopped by Jane’s hand upon his arm. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“I was wrong.” He accompanied his words with another step toward Mjolnir. “This egg’s presence is - and I do not say this lightly - a crisis in the making.” 

Jane found her feet and placed herself before him, her palm in the center of his chestplate to block his way forward. Chin tucked, she stood firm. “What is it?” 

Thor paused, though the itch to carry forward and deal with the threat grew the longer Jane kept him at bay. “The creature that hatches from such an egg is no minor novelty. It will possess intelligence, and power enough to prove dangerous if uncontrolled. I had assumed that because Nigel Erikson had been living in this realm for some time without calling attention to himself, that the Enchantress was the greater priority. My inattention—”

“You say one more word about inattention and so help me,” Jane cut him off. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for spending time with me.” 

The flash of comfort Thor felt in her unapologetic ferocity did not overcome his fears. As gently as he could, he wrapped his fingers around each of Jane’s shoulders and tried to make clear to her the danger. “The first individual it sees upon its hatching, whether Asgardian or Midgardian or other sentience, it takes upon their essential nature. Tell me, Jane, where is the egg now and who is likely watching it?” 

“Tony, probably, since it’s in his lab and you said the others just got back to the tower this morning,” Jane replied, still uncomprehending. “Tony pretty much lives in his lab, as far as I know.” 

“Yes. Tony Stark,” Thor said. “Whose recent actions have been demonstrably obsessive and reckless, who takes orders poorly and often hares off down paths of his own devising solely upon his own recognizance. Imagine these traits, combined with the cleverness of a wyrm and Stark’s formidable presence. If it has not hatched already, it will hatch soon and even the smallest portion of Stark’s arrogance will lose us what little influence we might have over such a beast.” 

“Thor…” Jane’s brows drew together. Ever willing to see the best in others, she protested, “Don’t you think that’s a little harsh—”

“I know of what I speak, for I was exiled upon Midgard for a similar arrogance and recklessness. Though I once more wield Mjolnir, even still I should be looked upon as, at best, a dubious recipient for such an egg. Stark’s discipline, though prodigious, cannot offset the pride of one who considers their own logic unassailable. Would you wish a winged creature that other realms consider a steed fit for a King to carry the distilled essence of all Stark’s strengths and weaknesses?” 

Jane face drew into a grimace and she lifted her staying hand from his chest. “You’ve been mad at him for a week,” she pointed out. “Is that…?”

Thor shook his head in denial. “That has naught to do with this. If circumstances were otherwise, such an egg would be tended until hatching by one who had earned such an honor, and even a hero of great renown might yet find themselves lacking in the eyes of their guardians. Compared to my Mjolnir, those who guard these beasts are of even greater discernment. There is too great a chance for catastrophe for the gifting to be taken lightly.” 

Nodding once, a sharp dip of her chin, Jane shrugged his hands from her shoulders and crossed the room to fill her shoulderbag with first her tablet, then the small metal box she had claimed was her ‘proof-of-concept’. She was a veritable whirlwind, stuffing papers and other sundries into her bag without regard for organization. 

By the time Thor retrieved Mjolnir and checked the fastening on his armor, she awaited him at the balcony, once more in his way. “You’re taking me with you.” 

“Best hold tight,” he told her, disinclined to argue. Mjolnir spun with a faint hum. Before he lifted off, however, he activated his comm with a tap at his ear and tried to contact the tower. “Do you read, Avengers Tower?” 

The silence on the line was only heightened by Jane’s inquisitive expression. Thor shook his head. 

“Try again,” she encouraged. 

“Stark?” Thor paused, “Do you read, Avengers? JARVIS, perhaps?”

Even if one of his teammates were occupied, even if all of them, Stark’s disembodied manservant should respond. Though the Tower itself looked no different than any other time he and Jane had stood to admire the skyline, the empty static upon the line was an ill omen.

“Maybe you broke it in your fight this morning?” Jane suggested.

“Then Natasha’s news of Nigel Erikson’s withdrawal from the swap meet were but hallucination on my part.” Thor shook his head. “I fear this is no malfunction.” 

Jane clutched her bag tight to her chest lest she lose any of the contents and gave him a nod. Without waiting for further response from the Tower, Thor flung them off the balcony. The flight would be a short one, and Thor could only hope for a reception that put paid to his fears.


End file.
